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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shel£PIi.£i T 1 

r^^\V4 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B., 

Professor of Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia College. 

This series is designed for use in secondary schools in accordance 
with the system of study recommended and outlined by the National 
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requirements in English, now adopted by the principal American colleges 
and universities. 

Each volume contains full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, 
and other explanatory and illustrative matter. Crown 8vo, cloth. 

Books Prescribed for the i8gy Examinations. 

FOR READING. 

Shakspere's As You Like It. With an introduction by Barrett 
Wendell, A.B., Assistant Professor of English in Harvard Univer- 
sity, and notes by William Lyon Phelps, Ph.D., Instructor in 
English Literature in Yale University. 

Defoe's History of the Plague in London. Edited, with intro- 
duction and notes, by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of Columbia 
College. With Portrait of Defoe. 

Irving's Tales of a Traveller. With an introduction by Brander 
Matthews, Professor of Literature in Columbia College, and ex- 
planatory notes by the general editor of the series. With Portrait of 
Irving. 

George Eliot's Silas Marner. Edited, with introduction and notes, 
by Robert Herrick, A.B., Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the 
University of Chicago. With Portrait of George Eliot. 

FOR STUDY. 

Shakspere's Merchant of Venice. Edited, with introduction and 
notes, by Francis B. Gummere, Ph.D., Professor of English in 
Haverford College. With Portrait of Shakspere. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, with 
introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook, Ph.D., L.H.D., 
Professor of the English Language and Literature in Yale University. 
With Portrait of Burke. 

Scott's Marmion. Edited, with introduction and notes, by Robert 
Morss Lovett, A.B., Assistant Professor of English in the 
University of Chicago. With Portrait of Sir Walter Scott. 

Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. Edited, with introduction 
and notes, by the Rev. Huber Gray Buehler, of the Hotchkiss 
School, Lakeville, Conn. With Portrait of Johnson. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS— Continued. 
Books Prescribed for the i8g8 Examinations. 

FOR READING. 

Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I. and II. Edited, with introduc- 
tion and notes, by Edward Everett Hale, Jr., Pli.D., Professor 
of Rhetoric and Logic in Union College. With Portrait of Milton. 

Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXIL, and XXIV. Edited, 
with introduction and notes, by William H. Maxwell, A.M., 
Superintendent of Public Instruction, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Percival 
Chubb, of the Manual Training High School, Brooklyn, With 
Portrait of Pope. 

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, from "The Spectator." 
Edited, with introduction and notes, by D. O. S. Lowell, A.M., 
EngHsh Master in the Roxbury Latin School, Roxbury, Mass. With 
Portrait of Addison. 

Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Edited, with introduction 
and notes, by Mary A. Jordan, A.M., Professor of Rhetoric and 
Old Enghsh in Smith College. With Portrait of Goldsmith. 

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Edited, with 
introduction and notes, by Herbert Bates, A.B., Instructor in 
English in the University of Nebraska. With Portrait of Coleridge. 

Southey's Life of Nelson. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
Edwin L. Miller, A.M., of the Englewood High School, Illinois. 
With Portrait of Nelson. 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
Wilson Farrand, A.M., Associate Principal of the Newark Acad- 
emy, Newark, N. J. With Portrait of Burns. 

FOR STUDY. 

Shakspere's Macbeth. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
John Matthews Manly, Ph.D., Professor of the English Language 
in Brown University. With Portrait of Shakspere. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, with 
introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook, Ph.D., L.H.D., 
Professor of the English Language and Literature in Yale University. 
With Portrait of Burke. 

De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited, with introduc- 
tion and notes, by Charles Sears Baldwin, Ph.D., Instructor in 
Rhetoric in Yale University. With Portrait of De Quincey. 

Tennyson's The Princess. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
George Edward Woodberry, A.B., Professor of Literature in 
Columbia College. With Portrait of Tennyson. 

*:c* See list of the series at end of volume for books prescribed for 
i8gg and jgoo. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B. 

PROFESSOR or RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN COIiUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



LORD TENNYSON 



THE PRINCESS 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

With full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, and other Explanatory and 
Illustrative Matter. Crown 8wo. Cloth. 



Shakspeee's Mebchant of Venice. 
Edited by Francis B. Gumniere,Ph.D., 
Professor of English in Haverford 
College. 

Shakspeee's As You Like It. With 
an Introduction by Barrett Wendell, 
A.B., Assistant Professor of English 
in Harvard University, and Notes by 
William Lyon Phelps, Ph. I)., Instruc- 
tor in English Literature in Yale 
University. 

Shakspeee's A Midsummee Night's 
Dream. Edited by George Pierce 
Baker, A.B., Assistant Professor of 
English in Harvard University. 

Shakspeee's Macbeth. Edited by 
John Matthews Manly, Ph.D., Pro- 
fessor of the English Language in 
Brown University. 



Milton's L'Allegko, II 
CoMus, AND Lycidas. Edited by 
William P. Trent, A.M., Professor of 
English in the University of the South. 

Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I. 
AND II. Edited by Edward Everett 
Hale, Jr., Ph.D., Professor of Rhetoric 
and Logic in Union College. 

Pope's Homee's Iliad. Books I., 
VI., XXII., and XXIV. Edited by 
William H. Maxwell, A.M., Ph.D., 
Superintendent of Public Instruction, 
Brooklyn, N. Y., and Percival Chubb, 
Instructor in English, Manual Training 
High School, Brooklyn. 

Defoe's History of the Plague in 
London. Edited by Professor G. R. 
Carpenter, of Columbia College. 

The Sie Rogee de Coverley Papers, 
from "The Spectator." Edited by 
D. O. S. Lowell, A.M., of the Roxbury 
Latin School, Roxbury, Mass. 

Goldsmith's The Vicae or Wakefield. 
Edited by Mary A. Jordan, A.M., 
Professor of Rhetoric and Old English 
in Smith College. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with 
Ameeica. Edited by Albert S. ('ook, 
Ph.D., L.H.D., Professor of the Eng- 
lish Language and Literature in Yale 
University. 



Scott's Woodstock. Edited by Bliss 
Perry, A. M., Professor of Oratory 
and Esthetic Criticism in Princeton 
College. 

Scott's Maemion. Edited by Robert 
Morss Lovett, A.B., Assistant Pro- 
fessor of English in the University of 
Chicago. 

Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Edited 
by James Greenleaf Croswell, A.B., 
Head-master of the Brearley School, 
New York, formerly Assistant Pro- 
fessor of Greek in Harvard University. 

Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. 
Edited by the Rev. Huber Gray 
Buehler, of the Hotchkiss School, 
Lakeville, Conn. 

Ieving's Tales of a Teaveller. With 
an Introduction by Brander Matthews, 
Professor of Literature in Columbia 
College, and Exjjlanatory Notes by the 
general editor of the series. 

Webstee's First Bunker Hill Ora- 
tion, together with other Addresses 
relating to the Revolution. Edited by 
Fred Newton Scott, Ph.D., Junior 
Professor of Rhetoric in the University 
of Michigan. 

Coleeidge's The Rime of the Ancient 
Maeinee. Edited by Herbert Bates, 
A.B., formerly Instructor m English 
in the University of Nebraska. 

Southey's Life OF Nelson. Edited by 
Edwin L. Miller, A.M., of the Engle- 
wood High School, Illinois. 

Caelyle's Essay on Buens. Edited 
by Wilson Farrand, A.M., Associate 
Principal of the Newark Academy, 
Newark, N. J. 

De Quincey's Flight of a Taetae 
Teibe (Revolt of the Tartars). 
Edited by Charles Sears Baldwin, 
Ph.D., Instructor in Rhetoric in Yale 
University. 

Tennyson's The Princess. Edited by 
George Edward Woodberry, A.B., 
Professor of Literature in Columbia 
College. 

George Eliot's Silas Marner. Edited 
by Robert Herrick, A.B., Assistant 
Professor of Rhetoric in the University 
of Chicago. 



Other Volumes are in Preparation. 




ALFRED LORD TENNY.SON 
(After the painting by G. F. Watts) 



fco ngwaws' English Classics 

TENNYSON'S 

THE PRINCESS 



EDITED 

WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 



GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY, A.B. 

PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 








^UW 



NEW YORK 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 
1896 



V 






Copyright, 1896 

BT 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

All rights reserved 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
New York. U. S. A. 



PREFACE 

^^The PriisTCESS" has been edited with elaborate and 
full notes by Prof. Percy M. Wallace (Macmillan), espe- 
cially for use in the schools of India ; and also by William 
J. Rolfe (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) and Henry W. Boyn- 
ton (Leach, Shewell & Sanborn), especially for American 
schools. The notes of the three editions are largely, of 
necessity, the same in substance, but diif er in fulness and 
number. ^^ A Study of The Princess, ^^ by S. E. Dawson 
(Sampson, Low & Co.), is the original source of much of 
the better criticism of the poem in these editions, as well as 
in other books on Tennyson lately published. The biog- 
raphy of Tennyson has not yet appeared, and in lieu of it 
the best information about his personality is to be found in 
a few passages of Fitzgerald^s and Carlyle's " Letters, ^^ in 
Mrs. Anne Thackeray-Eitchie^s '' Records of Tennyson, 
Ruskin, Browning/^ and in Mr. Knowles^s reminiscences in 
the Nineteenth Century Magazine (1892-93) . Two volumes 
of criticism by Americans, E. C. Stedman^s '' Victorian 
Poets, ^^ and Dr. Henry Van Dyke^s '^^ Poetry of Tenny- 
son," deserve mention. A bibliography of Tennyson, very 
complete, by R. H. Shepherd, was recently published. 
In preparing the present edition, I have referred to most 
of tliese volumes, as well as to others dealing more gener- 
ally with Tennyson^s genius and work, and special obli- 
gations have been properly accredited in the places where 
they occur ; but it gives me pleasure to acknowledge 
gratefully the assistance I have derived from all of them. 

Gr. E. WOODBERRY. 
Beverly, Mass., August 37, 1896. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction ix 

Suggestions to Teachers xxv 

Chronological Table xxix 

The Princess : A Medley : 

Prologue o . . . . 3 

1 15 

II 25 

III 45 

IV 60 

V 83 

VI. . 102 

VII 115 

Appendix : 

Longer Notes : 

I. The History of the Poem 132 

II. The " Weird Seizures " 133 

III. The Songs 135 

IV. Parallel Passages 137 

V. Examinations 140 



INTRODUCTION 



I. 



Alfeed Ten"KYSOK was born, if the usual statement is 
correct, on August 6, 1809, at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, 
England ; but the date in the parish register is August 5. 
His father. Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, commonly 
called ^^the old Doctor ,^^ was rector of the parish, and 
had twelve children, of whom Alfred was the third boy ; 
he was a learned man, and is said to have taken some 
share in the education of his sons. Tennyson's mother 
had greater influence over him, in forming his character ; 
in his verse he more than once bore tribute to her and 
drew scenes from his home-life. His two elder brothers, 
Frederick and Charles, were both poets of note in after- 
life. Charles, one year older than himself, was his favor- 
ite, and his constant companion ; they first attended a 
little school in the neighborhood, and then went to the 
Louth Grammar School, not far away, Charles in 1815 
and Alfred in 1816 ; each was less than eight years old at 
entrance, and Charles left when he was thirteen and Alfred 
when he was eleven. This ended their schooling, and in 
the youthful years that passed before they went to college 
they appear to have lived a life of their own together at 
home. The whole family of boys at the rectory are 
roughly described as ^'^ running about from one place to 
another,^^ known to everybody, and with ways of their 
own ; '^ they all wrote verses, they never had any pocket- 
money, they took long walks at night-time, and they were 
decidedly exclusive '^ — such is the comprehensive char- 
acter that a contemporary neighbor gave them. Cer- 



X INTRODUCTION 

tainly Charles and Alfred wrote a good deal of verse 
together from the time when the latter showed his 
brother some lines written on a slate when the rest of the 
family had gone to church ; and in 1827^ the year before 
they left home for college, the two published a volume, 
called ^^ Poems, By Two Brothers/^ through a bookseller at 
Louth, who gave them £20 for it, of which amount a small 
portion was taken out in books. The sum of Tennyson's 
boyhood, then, is that he was well brought up in a culti- 
vated home amid a large family, and had some outside 
schooling at first ; but he grew, in close companionship 
with a favorite brother of the same tastes, to be very fond 
of nature and of books, and to express himself very easily 
and fully in writing verses. The whole family kept to 
themselves, perhaps, but no more than was natural in the 
circumstances of their position in a small rural com- 
munity ; but Tennyson himself, who was always a lover 
of privacy and solitude, was shy and retiring more than 
his brothers, and formed a habit of reserve that continued 
through life. 

In 1828 the brothers went up to Cambridge and entered 
at Trinity College. There Tennyson found Arthur Hal- 
lam, who, though two years younger, had come up at the 
same time, and the two formed the friendship which is now 
one of the landmarks of English poetry, and is commem- 
orated in Tennyson's greatest work, '^'In Memoriam.'^ 
They competed for the Chancellor's prize in poetry, and 
Tennyson won it, in 1829 ; in 1830 Tennyson published a 
volume in London, '' Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, '' and made 
a journey to the Pyrenees with his friend ; in 1831, owing 
to his father's death, he left Cambridge, without taking a 
degree, and in 1832 he published another volume, entitled 
'^ Poems.'' These two early volumes, though the personal 
friends of Tennyson supported him with their praise and 
belief in him, met with enough hostile criticism to put an 
end to his publishing for some years. He was very sensi- 
tive to what was said of him, and he said himself. ^' The 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Reviews stopped me." At the same time he met with his 
first severe experience of life ; in 1833, Arthur Hallam, 
who was travelling with his father, the historian, died 
suddenly in Vienna ; the shock to Tennyson was a great 
one, and the poem mentioned above, *^ In Memoriam," 
expresses his emotions and the thoughts inspired by them 
on the occasion of this bereavement, though he was long- 
in writing out the work, and it was not published till 
seventeen years after the event. It is plain that Arthur 
Ilallam's death closed the j)age of youth in the poet^s 
life. 

For ten years after the issue of the volume of 1832, 
Tennyson remained silent. They were years of work, 
nevertheless, and he was devoting himself to the art he had 
chosen to follow, and becoming a master of it. His life 
does not seem to have been happy ; he had scanty means, 
and he moved about from place to place in the country or 
in lodgings in London ; but he had the best of friends, if 
they were few, and was a much-prized companion to men 
like Oarlyle, Thackeray, Fitzgerald, in whose letters 
glimpses of him are found, and to others less widely known,- 
a circle of intimate and intellectual associates. In 1842 
he again published a volume of poems, and from this dates 
his fame ; in 1850 he became the acknowledged head of 
English poetry, when he published ^^In Memoriam,'^ and 
was made poet-laureate. In the same year he married, 
and in 1853, soon after the birth of his son Hallam, he 
settled at Farringford, in the Isle of Wight, which is the 
place that will always be thought of and visited as his 
home, though he at a later time possessed another estate 
at Aldworth, in Sussex. For the rest of his long life he 
continued to write poetry — idyls, dramas, lyrics, poems of 
every sort. The most important of his longer works is 
'' The Idylls of the King," which tells the story of King 
Arthur's Knights of the Round Table ; but '' Maud," a lyr- 
ical love-drama, was, perhaps, his own favorite, and from 
it he used to read to his guests; and '^^ The Princess" 



xii INTRODUCTION 

contains many of Ms finest passages. He was a patriotic 
poet, also, and, as poet laureate, it was often his duty to 
speak for the nation on great occasions ; no poet has 
written so much, or more nobly, in honor of England. 
He was also a poet of friendship, and among his most 
characteristic pieces are those addressed to his companions 
in private life ; they are models of graceful compliment, 
true tribute, and affection, with warmth as well as refine- 
ment, both in phrase and feeling — the natural utterances 
of a poet's private life. But his verse is too voluminous 
and miscellaneous to be noticed here, even briefly, and 
the best of it everybody who reads books knows. He 
spent his life, otherwise undistinguished, in writing these 
many works, and was the greatest figure in English litera- 
ture, honored throughout the world. He once declined a 
baronetcy when it was offered to him, but in 1884 he 
consented to be made a peer. The close of his life was 
shadowed by the loss of his second son, Lionel. He died 
October 6, 1892, at Aldworth, and was buried in West- 
minster Abbey. 

II. 

^' The Princess " is a narrative poem in blank verse. It 
is called ^^a medley ^^ because its matter is miscellaneous ; 
it blends so modern a thing as a woman^s college with so 
mediaeval an incident as a tournament ; it passes frequently 
from a farcical to a serious tone, and it takes its illustrative 
material from the art, history, and customs of every age 
and country. Its subject is the proper sphere of woman 
in liTe, and it deals more particularly with the modern 
educational ideals of woman and the practical questions 
to which these give rise ; and since, especially at the time 
when the poem was written, the matter could not be dis- 
cussed without some poking of fun and light ridicule, 
Tennyson has presented it in a partly burlesque dress. 
For this reason the poem is called also mock-heroic ; that 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

is, one in which the personages, the incidents, and the 
style are externally of the same sort as are usual in solemn 
epics, but the substance itself is beneath these, inferior 
in dignity, and really unheroic. The diversity which is 
caused in these several ways is emphasized by the variety 
of the poetic forms used throughout ; in the main, the 
verse is epical, as in the set speeches and the narrative, 
but it is also sometimes idyllic, as in the lament of Lady 
Psyche, and sometimes lyrical, as in the songs. This dif- 
ference in the parts, while it gives Tennyson greater op- 
portunity to display his powers in various sorts of work, 
confuses one^s ideas about the poem and makes it difficult 
to express them, since what is true of one portion is not 
true of another, and what pleases one reader does not 
please another ; hence, criticism has been more contra- 
dictory and uncertain in respect to it than is the case 
with any other of Tennyson's works. 

The story itself, the plot, as it is called, that is, the 
succession of events that determines the situations one 
after another in which the characters are set, is a simple 
one. A Prince of the North has been betrothed in child- 
hood to a Princess of the South, and has fallen in love 
with her picture, a lock of her hair, and the idea of mar- 
rying her ; but when the embassy is sent to bring her as 
a bride, word is returned that she is disinclined to wed 
and the contract appears to be broken. On this, the 
Prince with two friends, Florian and Cyril, set off secretly 
to seek her, and find on arrival at her father's court that 
she has set up a Woman's College in a palace at a distance ; 
they obtain letters authorizing them to visit her, and ride 
on to the boundaries of her lands, where they make up 
their minds to go in disguise, as girl students, and so 
explore the place at leisure and see what the adventure 
will end in. They put on women's garments, arrive at 
the gates, apply for admission, and are received. From 
this point the action is concentrated into three days. On 
the first they register as students of Lady Psyche, who 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

recognizes her brother Florian and agrees to keep the 
secret, inasmuch as the penalty of their being discovered 
is death, according to an inscription over the gates, 
which in the darkness they had not seen ; but a girl, 
Melissa, overhears them and is taken into the plot of 
secrecy, and her mother. Lady Blanche, the rival of Lady 
Psyche, discovers the matter also, and she keeps silence 
for reasons of her own. The second day is devoted to a 
picnic in the woods. At dinner Cyril sings a too mascu- 
line song, and the Prince, being angry, betrays the sex of 
the intruders by both a blow and a word ; confusion fol- 
lows, the Princess falls into the river in her flight, the 
Prince rescues her, and night falls on the scene. Cyril 
escapes with Lady Psyche, but Florian and the Prince 
are captured and brought before the Princess for judg- 
ment ; then, at the critical moment, despatches come 
from her father saying that the Prince's father has in- 
vested her palace with an army, taken him prisoner, and 
holds him as a hostage. The Prince pleads his suit in 
vain, and he and his friend are thrust out of the gates at 
dawn and go to the camp. Meanwhile, during the night, 
the Princess's three brothers have come to her relief with 
an army ; and it is agreed to settle the trouble by a tour- 
nament between these brothers and the Prince and his 
two friends, each with a party — fifty on a side. This is 
the event of the third day. In the fight the Prince and 
his party are overthrown, and himself dangerously hurt. 
On the field the Princess decides to convert the college 
into a hospital for her wounded friends, and she at last 
directs that the wounded of the opposite party shall be 
admitted also, with the Prince himself. Here the rapid 
action ends, and the time of the poem continues through 
the days of illness and convalescence, and concludes with 
the yielding of the Princess, who had come to love the 
Prince in caring for him. 

From this outline it will be seen there is a connected 
story ; but it is regarded as a weak one. This is partly 



INTR OD UCTION XV 

because of the obvious absurdity and transparent unreality 
of the incidents ; but something of the impression of weak- 
ness is due to the general tone or treatment. It is plain 
that the college is looked on somewhat as a joke ; and the 
Princess disgraceful trick can be saved from contempt only 
by considering it as a prank ; in certain parts, such as the 
conversation of the host^ the expulsion of the Prince^ 
and the return to the camp, the poem touches mere 
burlesque. Throughout there is the suggestion of comic 
opera, with very beautiful scenery, tableaux of girls in 
crowds, a glittering combat, and the rest. An important 
defect in the action, as it would generally be considered, 
demands especial attention. This is the fact that the 
controlling element in the plot lies outside the story as 
it is told above. The Princess does not yield because of 
anything that the Prince or anyone else does or says ; she 
yields because she feels nature stirring within her, the 
instincts of motherhood and the affections that cling 
about them. She begins to soften when she is caring for 
the child of Lady Psyche, Avhich has been left behind 
when the latter fled. This child is the true hero of the 
poem, as Tennyson liimself said ; the influence of the child 
masters the whole development of the story, so far as the 
chief issue, the winning of the Princess, is concerned, 
and is felt in the minor parts of the plot also. But the 
child is not a character ; it accomplishes nothing by its 
personal action ; it is not a child, but the child — that is, 
it is the symbol of the power of nature, being itself an 
embodiment of the domestic affections, and by its mere 
presence, its beauty, helplessness, and, in one word, its 
childhood, awakening emotion and guiding the way of 
natural love. This is the intention of the poet, and the 
meaning of the fact that he introduces the child into 
critical points of the narrative, as in the judgment scene, 
and uses it not only in the softening of the Princess's 
nature tow^ard the Prince, but also as an instrument in 
such lesser matters as the wooing of Cyril and the recon- 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

ciliation of the Princess with Lady Psyche. The main 
motive itself, which the child represents in the narrative, 
the domestic or nature motive, as you may prefer to call 
it, is echoed in all the intermediate songs, and so brings 
them also into the structure of the poem, and makes them 
an essential part of it, as is pointed out in the longer 
notes in the appendix to this edition. 

Now, one may say that this symbolical use of an infant 
for the nature-motive which dominates the story, is a 
defect in the plot, since it lies outside the action, in a 
true sense ; or one may say that it supplements the plot 
and enlarges its scope, heightens and betters it, by refer- 
ring the action to its sources in primary thoughts and feel- 
ings, and the fundamental power of nature in human life. 
Either of these is a correct view. But, perhaps, it may 
be better to observe simply that as the burlesque element 
in the poem centres in the feminine disguise of the Prince 
and his friends — they playing at being women in their 
clothes, as the women are playing at being men in their 
minds — so the serious element in the poem, its thought 
and spirituality, and its finer beauties of insight and feel- 
ing and emotional conviction, centres in the child. In 
this way one is enabled to keep the threads of this '^ med- 
ley '' somewhat more distinct, and see how they inter- 
weave in the unity of the whole ; for, though it is hard to 
grasp it, the poem is a whole. 

Apart from the plot, the characters individually should 
receive some attention. They are very simple characters 
indeed. The Prince himself is a conventional lover ; per- 
sonally he is amiable, gentle, and attractive, but he is a 
dreamer, and has taken no active part in the world ; he 
has only the beginnings of a man in him. His '^'^ weird 
seizures ^^ are spoken of in the longer notes ; but so far 
as he is concerned, they only emphasize the visionary and 
sensitive temperament that he always displays. It is, 
perhaps, worth while to notice that he has no touch of 
that wrath in love that Tennyson's more mortal lovers 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

are characterized by, in '' Locksley Hall," '' The Let- 
ters/' and "Maud/' On the other hand, he does not 
approach, as a type, the sighing youths of Shakspere, 
of whom the " gentle Romeo " is the lovely pattern. But, 
for all that, he sustains his simple part with much grace 
and pity, and shows a noble nature, and his eloquence 
deejiens and rings very true at the close. He is easily 
forgiven for his " saucy tricks," which were no more 
than the light-mindedness of a boy. His two companions 
belong to the same school ; they were youths, — Florian 
only his friend and "half -self," and Cyril the more vital 
and masculine wooer of Lady Psyche, in whose make-up 
there is, possibly, a thought of Romeo's Mercutio. The 
three women who take the corresiDonding leading parts 
are the Princess, Lady Psyche, and Lady Blanche. The 
first of these makes as doubtful an impression as does 
the Prince. It is as difficult for the poet to make her 
lovable as to make the Prinqe heroic. They knew her 
at home very well ; the description which her father first 
gives of her — "all she is and does is awful" — is true of 
her as she appears externally, and the phrase in which, 
toward the end, her favorite brother sums her up — " she 
flies too high " — will probably echo the reader's opinion ; 
it is only after the change in her that she appeals in a 
womanly way to our sympathy, and really interests us. 
Her figure itself, in the earlier part, always seems to have 
a pose ; she has the hardness and wilfulness of inexperi- 
ence ; and though her aims are high and her motives 
noble, the falseness that permeates her whole conception 
of life and duty is so apparent as to obstruct appreciation 
of her virtues ; it is not easy to present a character which 
is fundamentally in error as admirable. The scene in 
which her first character, as the Princess of the college, 
gives way — when she yields to the entreaty and remon- 
strance of all the others and restores the child, is recon- 
ciled to Lady Psyche, and opens her palace to the wounded 
of both sides — is the turning-point of her own career ; 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

and in her later character as the Princess of the sick- 
room, she is remade into true womanhood. Her two 
friends, like those of the Prince, are less complex. Lady 
Psyche is a good sister and mother, and joins very cheer- 
fully in wedlock with Cyril. Her desertion of her child 
is not to be too seriously considered in her disfavor, since 
it was plainly necessary to the maclmiery of the plot that 
the child should be left, and on her part she never showed 
any lack of tenderness or solicitude which would have made 
the act natural to her or truly characteristic. Lady 
Blanche is the villain of the piece, and drawn certainly 
with sufficient unamiability. As she could not wed with 
Florian, her daughter Melissa takes her place in the paii-- 
ing off of the leading characters. The contrast of the 
honesty of the men^s friendship among themselves with 
the treachery of that of the women is striking, but it is 
to be remembered that the foundation of the latter was 
wrong, owing to the false circumstances in which the 
women were placed ; it should not be inferred that Ten- 
nyson meant to Avrite slightingly of female as opposed to 
male friendship, nor should the comparison of his treat- 
ment of the subject with Shakspere^s be pressed. Of the 
remaining characters, only the two kings need be con- 
sidered. They also are a contrasted pair ; the Princess 
father a man of masculine self-assertion and energy, the 
Princess's a man of weak fibre and yielding policy ; and it 
is plain that the position of the women in his court, their 
having their way, is thought of by the poet as a result 
of his relaxed and inefficient character as a king. The 
two represent the extremes of man^s traditional policy 
toward woman, — severity and indulgence. 

The scenes, or situations, in the poem should be observed 
as points in the development of the narrative, but they 
require little remark. The principal ones are the king^s 
anger at the return of the embassy, with the dialogue; the 
recognition of Florian by Psyche, with its domestic con- 
verse ; the presentation to the Princess, which is nearly all 



INTRODUCTION xix 

speecli-making ; the ride, with the pleading of the Prince ; 
the supper, with its songs and catastrophe ; the judgment- 
scene ; the scene over the body of the wounded Prince ; and 
the concluding talk of the lovers in the sick-room. In 
all these the action is slight, the dialogue is rather orator- 
ical tlian dramatic, and the main effect depends on details 
of the setting and expression rather than on the power of 
single great emotions or the fatality of the event itself. 
In other words, the method followed is not that of great 
epic or dramatic art, but is of a different kind. 

From what has been said it is plain that neither the 
story, the characters, nor the situations constitute the 
greatness of this poem. Its excellence and interest must 
be sought elsewhere. Its true interest lies in the power 
with which it presents the ideal of wedded love in opposi- 
tion to a mistaken theory of woman^s life in the world. 
This ideal is not presented incidentally ; it is felt 
throughout, and it is stated fully and explicitly as the 
climax of the poem in the last speeches of the Prince. 
The problem dealt with arises in contemporary life in 
many forms. It is the question of the independent equal- 
ity of the sexes. Tennyson states it only partially ; but, 
so far as he considers it, he presents it in simple and 
large lines. The main idea of the Princess is that knowl- 
edge is the basis of man's superiority in the world, and 
that by the possession of knowledge woman would become 
in capacity all that man is. Her initial error is in ascrib- 
ing too great importance in life to knowledge. Knowl- 
edge is only one of the elements of power in life ; it is a 
|)art and not the whole ; and it results, if sought exclu- 
sively, in dwarfing both man and woman ; it makes man 
a i^edant and woman a blue-stocking. In following out 
her scheme for elevating woman, the Princess attempts to 
substitute knowledge for love as an end of life. Tenny- 
son, on the other hand, does not, in his criticism of the 
theory and practise of the Princess, present love as an 
alternative to knowledge, but as inclusive of it with other 



XX INTRODUCTION 

factors of life as means of a rich development of human 
nature in both man and woman, i He destroys the conflict 
which the Princess has set up between the two, knowledge 
and love, by allowing full scope to the former under the 
dominance of the latter ; and while he shows that love is 
an element in development that far exceeds knowledge in 
power and in richness of result, he shows also that knowl- 
edge is a strong ally and support to love in bringing out 
the full capacity of life. This is the reconciliation which 
he effects between the contending elements in the poem, 
and which the Princess asks for in pleading for some sym- 
pathy, in her new life of love, with her earlier aims and 
convictions. ^ The stress in the opening parts is laid upon 
knowledge, and in the later parts upon love ; the theme 
really changes from one into the other as the main subject 
of thought ; and the interest grows and is strengthened 
because the poet finds that the basis of love lies in nature 
herself, and he is enabled so to deepen and expand his 
argument as he goes on by calling to his support the 
whole power of nature, not merely in idea, but active in 
the characters themselves, constantly illustrated by their 
emotions and positions, enforced by the relationships of 
parent and child, brother and sister, as they are brought 
to bear on the actual state of affairs, and pleading trumpet- 
tongued on every side that the Princess turns. The voices 
of life, wherever they are heard in the poem, lift them- 
selves against her ; and it is to them, and to the voice that 
wakes in her own bosom, that she yields. ' It must be 
borne in mind, nevertheless, that she does not abandon the 
intellectual ideal of enlightenment for woman ; it ceases 
to hold exclusive and independent rule over her, but it 
takes a subordinate and partial place as contributory to 
the ideal of wedded love which becomes supreme over her 
life.*-' The Princess is not less than she was by the sur- 
render she makes ; but new opportunities of growth, and 
vastly greater ones in their power of ennobling, enriching, 
and enlarging her nature and giving happiness, are opened 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

to her and made her own.*' Such is the case as Tennyson 
presents it, even though some exception be taken to both 
his matter and his manner, inasmuch as, in matter, the 
only phase of knowledge he admits into the poem is that 
of its acquisition, not of its creative use, and as, in man- 
ner, his tone is one of perpetual irony toward the kind of 
knowledge which the '^ sweet girl-graduates^'' acquire, 
and of patronizing compliment to the girls themselves. 
He never allows the reader to forget for an instant the 
femininity of the pupils, in their costume, surroundings, 
habits of behavior, and general prettiness of effect to the 
masculine eye and fancy. His argument is enveloped in 
this atmosphere ; but it is a sound argument, both per- 
suasive and convincing, and in proportion as he draws 
nearer to the essential truths and the seriousness of that 
which he means to bear into the heart at last, this irony 
in the tone, this prettiness in the effect, this scarcely dis- 
cernible suppression of the smile, die away, and the con- 
cluding passages are wholly free from it, being noble, grave, 
and eloquent, as fine in feeling as they are lucid in truth. 
Such a theme, however, though handled with power and 
truth, might not have made the poem of enduring value. 
More than the truth of the argument, which might 
appeal to the mind only and be stated in prose, is the 
charm which makes the poem a masterpiece. ^' This 
charm lies in its beauty ; in mere beauty, independent of 
all other considerations, the poem is one of the richest in 
the English language. This beauty will be felt by stu- 
dents in different degrees, according to the openness of 
their minds to literature and their experience with its 
great works ; but it can be definitely thought of by all in 
various ways. It is characteristic of Tennyson that he is 
pictorial in his art ; he makes pictures in words, usually 
upon a small and highly finished scale. In this poem he 
particularly makes landscape pictures ; in fact, he con- 
stantly uses a beautiful landscape as the background of the 
action, and also in similes for illustration and ornament ; 



xxii INTR OB UCTION 

he describes it in broad or narrow limits of the eye, bnt 
always in clear and vivid detail, and he includes in it not 
merely effects of storm and sunshine, the open country, 
valley and cataract, woodland and lake and river, but 
also effects of architecture in the account of the palace 
and its gardens, and of sculpture and painting as acces- 
sories to the palace ; all this constitutes the outer scene, 
or stage-setting, of the action, and is as splendidly con- 
ceived as it is elaborately executed. The characters 
themselves and the mass of living figures, the swarms of 
girls and the press of men in the tournament, are also 
presented very often as pictures ; such are the form of 
Lady Psyche in the tent, of the Princess in the judgment 
scene, of the child in every instance, and, on the mere 
panoramic scale, the scenes of the gathering of the girls 
in their collegiate exercises. This is Tennyson^s method 
of work, and the number, the artistic power, and the 
various loveliness of these pictures make a large part of 
the beauty of the poem. In considering them the reader 
should examine the details, since Tennyson seeks usually 
not a vague general effect, but one which results from 
the union of parts, each of which is clear and distinct ; 
the minuteness of Tennyson's observation of small objects 
of nature and the accuracy of his eye should be noticed, 
and also the fact that he selects for his descriptive "detail 
the significant and characteristic feature of the object. 
But poetry does not merely use such imagery as this as a 
setting and adjunct to itself ; its method of expression 
always is through images rather than through thoughts ; 
and, apart from the general pictorialness that has been 
spoken of, the poem contains a multitude of images not 
only in the descriptive passages, but throughout. What 
woman has accomplished in the past, for example, is ])re- 
sented by placing before the eye statues and other artistic 
work representing the figures and the events ; and what 
love accomplishes in life is in the same way presented to the 
mind's eye in words in the songs that tell of a particular 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

reconciliation of hnsband and wife, or of a particular wife 
mourning for her husband ; the regret for the past, which 
is an emotion, is expressed by a succession of beautiful and 
just images in "^ Tears, idle tears, ^^ and likewise the woo- 
ing of the lover in the charming image that concludes the 
lyric " Now sleeps the crimson petal " and in the unbroken 
succession of images in the succeeding idyl. It is this 
method that makes poetry different from prose in being 
usually briefer, more vivid, and more telling ; and Tenny- 
son is not only a master of it, but he is remarkable among 
poets even for the exactness, originality, and fitness of 
simile and metaphor, and in no poem of his are more 
single examples of such perfection to be found than here. 
If a word more be added to say that the melody of his 
verse-music is an aid to this beauty and a part of its charm, 
and that the literary excellence, the mere use of words, line 
by line, is another aid to it, and that this verse and line 
work constitute the surface polish of the poem, perhaps 
enough has been said to indicate to students in what specific 
places and ways to look to perceive and understand, as 
well as to feel, the beauty of the poem. 

This elaboration on the purely poetical side has been 
thought by some critics to overlay the work too ornately, 
and to conceal its weakness in structure and character. 
This is a view which can be taken only by those who find 
the poem lacking in unity and substance, and depreciate it 
on that ground. It is true that the structure is not simple 
and mechanical so that any one might at a glance discern 
its unity, and also that it presents so many phases as to 
confuse the student at first, but its many and various 
parts are united in novel and subtle ways beyond the power 
and above the faculty of any mechanic of literature ; like 
most of Tennyson^s longer and shorter works, except the 
briefest and most elementary, its unity is that of a con- 
voluted organism, but it is not less a complete whole on 
that account. The wealth of subsidiary matter, too, that 
which seems most loosely connected with the substance. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

is in the earlier portion, crowded with historical, mytho- 
logical, and scientific allnsion ; but this is because of the 
meagreness of the theme of knowledge in comparison 
with the intrinsic richness of the theme of love which 
fills the later portion with its own matter, and also 
because of the slightness of the dramatic action and inter- 
est of the characters before they are caught in the tragic 
coil of events. To me, though it is the beauty of the 
poem which makes it the masterpiece it is, and the truth 
of the doctrine which gives it substance and life, yet its 
highly organized and original construction seems not less 
manifest ; and in dealing with it analytically, part by 
part, as is necessary in an orderly presentation of its con- 
tents, I have had a constant sense that its perfection as 
a whole was being lessened to the mind ; yet this gradual 
understanding of the poem must be the lot of every 
reader ; part comes after part with more or less apprecia- 
tion, new phases appear in different moods and seasons 
and after the lapse of years, and it is only after many 
re-readings and long familiarity that the poem can be 
comprehended in its manifold nature as one entire and 
perfect whole. 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

It will be seen from the character of the notes^ and 
their being placed at the foot of the page, that the main 
object of the editor is to enable the student to arrive at 
the meaning of the text with as little difficulty as possi- 
ble, immediately, and without the intervention of dic- 
tionaries, encyclopaedias, or other books of any kind. If 
the poem is to be used as a means of education in litera- 
ture, primarily, it seems best to bring the student's mind 
into contact with it easily, and at once, without breaking 
the interest by the necessity of looking something up, or 
substituting a different interest of a historical or philolog- 
ical or scientific kind for the literary interest, or in any 
way interfering with the readiest reception of the con- 
tents of the verse. It is the peculiar aim of poetry to 
give pleasure of a particular kind ; whatever lessens that 
pleasure or destroys it, attacks the life of poetry at its 
source ; the intervention of books of reference at first 
between the meaning and the mind emphasizes the ob- 
scurity or unintelligibility of the poem and loads it with 
the weight of its worst fault ; such an appearance of 
difficulty in the reading should more especially be avoided 
in the case of young pupils, to whom the mere novelty 
and form of poetry usually offer hindrances which cannot 
be eliminated. Unless the student is pleased, and pleased 
in the way which belongs to poetry, he will neither under- 
stand, love, nor value it ; and nothing will deter him 
more surely from literature of any kind than the fact 
that he finds it either hard or tedious to get the sense of it. 

If this view of the matter be correct, the subsidiary 
elements in the poem should be kept secondary and sub- 



xxvi SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

ordinate in instruction. The allusions should be suffi- 
ciently understood to bring out their meaning in the text 
as illustrations of its thought, but they should not be 
made primarily opportunities for instruction in history, 
mytliology, or science. Similarly the use of archaic 
forms and unusual words, if they are understood, need 
lead to no further verbal or grammatical study, and 
parallel passages in other poets need not be referred to, if 
they throw no light upon the text. All these matters lie 
outside the study of literature, and are mainly elucidatory 
or curious ; for the young student the text itself offers 
sufficient material ; and these other studies, though valua- 
ble elsewhere and cognate here, are superfluous, and may 
be misleading to him in giving him a wrong impression 
of what the reading of poetry means. 

From the start the poetical nature of the work should 
be kept before the mind as the main thing. The student 
should be told that poetry differs from prose in its form, 
it is true, but not in good sense and intellectual and moral 
value ; that it is essentially a more effective form of 
expression, a better way of saying things, than prose is, 
for certain purposes, and that it must possess the virtues 
of good expression, simplicity, directness, power, and the 
like ; and, especially, that by the constant use of image 
and example it conveys its meaning more instantly, viv- 
idly, and powerfully, and in a more penetrating and last- 
ing manner, than prose, while it adds to this force an 
element of charm tlirough the beauty or suggestiveness 
of the imagery or the rhythm of the verse ; and, further, 
that where it does not use images, it is only a more melo- 
dious prose in fit, brief, and noble words. Such ele- 
mentary truths about poetry as these should be the 
foundation in the student's mind, and they should be 
illustrated by the plainest examples. It is necessary that 
he should know what a verse is, and that the pentameter 
is normally ten syllables, of which every second syllable is 
accented ; but that at times there may be more than ten 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS xxvii 

syllables, and the accent may be shifted to the other syl- 
lable ; further than this in the knowledge of metre it is 
not necessary to go. He should learn to read the lines 
with a sense of their equal time, and should understand 
that a line with extra syllables is to be read in the same 
time (without eliding any syllable, however), as if it con- 
tained only the usual ten ; otherwise he may lose the 
metrical effect of the hurried or checked lines, and with 
it the sympathy of the sound with the sense ; and he 
should know that such irregularities are not purposeless 
and at random, but are all intended. The power to read 
verse, with a correct sense of its time, is a considerable 
part of the knowledge and interpretation of poetry, and is 
a gauge of the student^s real acquisition ; it is not difficult 
to learu, and it may be easily encouraged and quickly 
developed by the recitation of passages set to be memo- 
rized. In this poem, the songs, the idyl, and the speeches 
of the Prince in the last part, especially that which 
describes his mother, should be so memorized. 

As a whole, the poem is one of difficulty to the young; 
its subject-matter is in advance of their experience of life, 
its structure is complex, and its art is of a subtle and deli- 
cate kind that is more effective in proportion as one's 
literary knowledge increases. In many ways it is not 
adapted to beginners in the study of literature ; but, on 
the other hand, its splendor of language, its eloquence, 
and its collegiate air recommend it ; and its beauty and 
truth can be pointed out, and the student can be led to 
perceive them, if not fully to comprehend them. In what 
way such guidance can be given is indicated in the Intro- 
duction. It may be added here that the wiser method 
may be to adapt one's instruction to Tennyson's own 
mode of work, and direct attention to the details, the lit- 
tle pictures, the more melodious and perfect lines, the 
noble sentiments, the apt similes, the eloquent passages, 
and so allow the composite general effect to grow of itself 
out of the definitely known and felt details. The whole 



xxviii SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

might well be read through once for these, and a second 
time for the general scheme and impression. The famili- 
arity which a second reading enforces would be a very 
great assistance in bringing about that ready receptivity 
and immediate response on the part of the student which 
seems to the editor the important matter. It is necessary 
to be patient with students of literature, at all times ; 
they cannot understand, except through their experience 
of life, for poetry can strike no chord that does not 
already tremble in the heart under the hand of life ; but 
as one grows, one is both more variously and more power- 
fully sensitive, and then literature gives up its meaning. 
Students may derive much or little at the time from such a 
work as " The Princess,^" but if what has been advanced 
above be right in thought, the best result will be a greater 
openness of the mind to the methods of appeal Avhich 
poetry uses, and regard for its emotional and spiritual 
power. It will matter little whether a student has gar- 
nered a good deal of curious and interesting knowledge 
about matters spoken of in the poem ; but if he has come 
to like and value ten lines of it only, that is the real gain, 
for they will be a standard of literature with him, a vital 
standard which has passed within and become part and 
parcel of his tastes. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



XXIX 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

[The following table includes, under "The Life of Tennyson," the principal 
biographical and bibliographical dates in his career, and under "Contemporary 
Literary History" the dates of the birth and death of his contemporaries in litera- 
ture, and of the first book (except in a few instances) published by them, so far as 
such dates fall within the period, 1809-1892. The table is based upon Eyland's 
"Chronological Outlines of English Literature," Whitcomb's "Chronological Out- 
lines of American Literature," Luce's "Handbook to Tennyson's Works," and 
Shepherd's " Bibliography of Tennyson." For further detail, especially in respect 
to private issues and poems contributed to periodicals Luce and Shepherd may be 
consulted.] 



The Life op Tennyson. 



1811, 



1816. 



Birth, August 6, at Somersby. 
Arthur Hallam born. 

Louth Grammar School. 
Tennyson leaves school. 



1827. 
1828. 



1829. 
1830. 

18.31. 
18.32. 
1833. 



Poems by Two Brothers. 

Cambridge : Trinity College, Octo 
ber 28. Meeting with Arthur 
Hallam. 

Timbuctoo : Prize Poem. 

Poems Chiefly Lyrical. Journey to 
the Pyrenees, with Arthur Hallam. 

Death of Tennyson's father. 

Poems (dated 18.33). 

Death of Arthur Hallam, Septem- 
ber 13. 



1837. The Tennysons leave Somersby. 



1842. Poems. 



Contemporary Literary History. 



1809. Mrs. Browning, Holmes, Poe, Dar- 
win born. Irving, Knickerbock- 
er's History of New York. 

1811. Thackeray born. 

1812. Robert Browning born. Byron, 

Childe Harold. 

1813. Southey, Poet Laureate. Shelley, 

Queen Mab. 

1814. Scott, Waverley. Wordsworth, The 

Excursion. 

1816. Coleridge, Christabel. 

1817. Keats, Poems. 

1819. Kingsley, Ruskin, Lowell, born. 

1820. George Eliot born. Cooper, Precau- 

tion. 

1821. Keats died. De Quincey, Confes- 

sions of an Opium-Eater. Bryant, 

Poems. 
1822 Matthew Arnold born. Shelley died. 

Lamb, Essays of Elia. 
1824 Byron died. Landor, Imaginary 

Conversations. 
1825. Macaulay, Milton. 

1827. Poe, Tamerlane and other Poems. 

1828. Rossetti born. Hawthorne, Fan- 
shawe. 



1831. Whittier, Legends of New England. 

1832. Scott died. 
3. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus. R. Brown- 
ing, Pauline. 

1834. Coleridge died. Dickens, Sketches 
by Boz. A. H. Hallam, Remains. 

1837. Swinburne born. Emerson, Nature. 
Thackeray, Yellowplush Papers. 

18.38. Mrs. Browning, The Seraphim and 
other Poems. 

18.39. Longfellow, Voices of the Night. 
1841. Lowell, A Year's Life. Newman, 

Tracts for the Times, No. XC. 



XXX 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.— Continued. 



The Life of Tennyson. 



Contemporary Literary History. 



1845. Receives a pension, £200. 
1847. Tlie Princess. 



1850. Poet Laureate, November. In Me- 
moriam. Marries Emily Selhvood, 
June 13 ; resides at Twiclienliam. 

1852. Ode on the Deatli of tlie Dulie of 

Wellington. Hallam Tennyson 
born, August 11. 

1853. Removes to Farringford. 

1854. Charge of the Light Brigade. Lionel 

Tennyson born, March 16. 

1855. Maud and other Poems. D. C. L., 

Oxford. 
1857. Enid and Nimue : or, The True and 
the False. 1 



1859. [Four] Idylls of the King. Journey 

to Portugal, with Palgrave. 
1861. Second journey to the Pyrenees. 



1864. Enoch Arden, etc. 

1865. Refuses a baronetcy. Death of Ten- 

nyson's mother, February 21. 
1867. Purchases Aldworth, Sussex. 
1869. The Holy Grail and other Poems. 

1872. Gareth and Lynctte, and The Last 

Tournament. 
1875. Queen Mary. 
1877. Harold. 

1879. The Lover's Tale. 2 The Falcon, 

acted at St. James's Theatre. 

1880. Ballads and other Poems. 

1881. The Cup, acted at the Lyceum 

Theatre. 

1882. The Promise of May, acted at the 

Globe Theatre. 

1884. Made a peer as Baron of Aldworth 

and Farringford. The Falcon and 
The Cup published. Becket. 

1885. Tiresias and other Poems. 

1886. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. 

Death of Lionel Tennyson, April 
20. 



1843. 



1844. 



1848. 



1849. 
1850. 



Southey died. Wordsworth, Poet 
Laureate. Ruskin, Modern Paint- 
ers. 

Campbell died. 



Matthew Arnold, The Strayed Revel- 
ler and other Poems. 

Poe died. 

Wordsworth died. Rossetti, The 
Germ. 



1851. Cooper died. 



18.55. Kingsley, Westward, Ho ! 



1858. George Eliot, Scenes from Clerical 

Life. 

1859. Macaulay, De Quincey, Irving, died. 

Darwin, Origin of Species. 
1861. Mrs, Browning died. Swinburne, 
Rosamund. 

1863. Thackeray died. 

1864. Landor, Hawthorne, died. 

1865. Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criti- 

cism. 



1870. Dickens died. Rossetti, Poems. 

1875. Kingsley died. 
1878. Bryant died. 



1881. Carlyle, George Eliot, died. 

1882. Darwin, Rossetti, Longfellow, Emer- 

son, died. 



1 Privately printed, and published revised in Idylls of the King, 1859. 

2 Written in 1828, printed and suppressed in 1833, and revised, printed, and sup- 
pressed in 1869, and now again revised and published, owing to the appearance of a 
pirated copy of the 1833 edition. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
CHRONOLOGICAL TKBLE.- Concluded. 



XXXI 



The Life of Tennyson. 



1889. Demeter and other Poems. 

1892. The Foresters, acted at Daly's The- 
atre, New York, and published 
the same year. Death, October 6, 
at Aldworth ; buried October 12, 
in Westminster Abbey. The 
Death of ffinone, Akbar's Dream, 
and other Poems, October 28. 



Contemporary Literary History. 



1888. Matthew Arnold died. 

1889. R. Browning died. 

1891. Lowell died. 

1892. Whittier died. 



THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY 



THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY. 

Prologue. 

Sir Walter ViviAiq- all a summer's day 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 

1. The scene is here laid in the grounds of an English country- 
seat, said to be that of Sir John Simeon, at Swainston, which the 
owner had opened for the day to his tenantry and to the Mechanics' 
Institute of the neighboring borough, or town, for a field- meeting. 
The poet represents himself as visiting at the house with a party of 
college friends, who gather in the Abbey-ruin, and there tell the story 
of The Princess, each taking up a part in succession, in round-robin 
fashion. The Prologue is an introduction, of which the purpose is to 
open the subject, to provide the occasion and the scenery of the tale, 
and to give the atmosphere which shall envelop it, or the tone. 
The description of the landscape (54-80), with its medley of mimic 
experiments in popular science , its reflection of new conditions of 
common education, and its general air of novelty and contemporary 
change, gives the background of the smaller party in the Abbey-ruin, 
but also fit^y prepares the mind for the subjects of thought with 
which the poem deals. The description of the house and the Abbey- 
ruin, on the other hand, is more narrowly intended to lead up to 
the contrasts, the jumble of elements, and general miscellaneousness 
of the narrative itself. The actual scene has been assigned also to 
another locality. " I have every reason to believe that the mansion 
referred to in Tennyson's Priiicess belongs to the Lushington family, 
and is near Maidstone. I was present at a fete of the Maidstone 
Mechanics' Institute, and took part in several of the experiments 
referred to, and the description exactly agrees with what occurred " 
(quoted from an anonymous source in Walters's In Tennyson Land, 
1890, pp. 28-29.) The poem is dedicated to Mr. Henry Lushington. 

2. Lawns, open grassy lands, not the close-mown, well-kept lawn of 
American usage ; the former is usually plural, the latter singular. 



4 THE PRINCESS [Prologue 

Up to the people : thither flock'd at noon 
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half 
The neighbouring borough with their Institute 
Of which he was the patron. I was there 
From college, visiting the son, — the son 
A Walter too, — with others of our set. 
Five others : we were seven at Vivian-place. 

And me that morning Walter showed the house, 10 

Greek, set with busts : from vases in the hall 
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names. 
Grew side by side ; and on the pavement lay 
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park. 
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time ; 
And on the tables every clime and age 
Jumbled together ; celts and calumets, 
Claymore and snowslioe, toys in lava, fans 
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, 

11. Oreek, of the Greek style of architecture. 
Set with busts, adorned externally with busts. 

12. Names, botanical names of exotic fiowprs, but, though learned, 
not unlovely ; on the contrary, these names are often strange and 
beautiful, and this is the meaning here. 

13. Pavement, the hall floor. The "carved stones" were not 
inlaid, but placed on the floor as in a museum. 

15. Ammonites, fossil shells of a genus of cuttle-fishes, coiled and 
chambered like the nautilus. The largest are from three to four 
feet in diameter. 

First hones, fossils of other varieties. 

17. Celts, stone or bronze implements, in shape like an axe or 
chisel, used by primitive man. 

Calumets, Indian tobacco-pipes, ornamented with feathers ; 
this pipe was a sacred utensil in the rite of making peace. 

18. Claymore, the Highland heavy two-handed sword. 
Toys in, toys made out of. 

19. Sandal, a scented wood of the Orient. These fans are elabo- 
rately carved. 

Rosaries, strings of beads used in prayer. 



Prologue] A MEDLEY 5 

Laborious Orient ivory sphere in sphere, 20 

The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 
From the isles of palm : and higher on the walls. 
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer. 
His own forefather's arms and armour hung. 

e 

And " this/^ he said, ''^ was Hugh's at Agincourt ; 
And that was old Sir Ealph's at Ascalon : 
A good knight he ! we keep a chronicle 
With all about him " — which he brought, and I 
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights. 
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings 30 

Who laid about them at their wills and died ; 
And mixt with these, a lady, one that arm'd 
Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the gate. 
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. 

" miracle of women," said the book, 
^' noble heart who, being strait-besieged 

20. Sphere, Chinese ivory balls, carved out of the solid, one inside 
another. This line is one of the most admired in Tennyson, both 
for its melody and for the sense that the sound conveys of the pre- 
ciousness of the little spheres and of their sliding movement one on 
another as they diminish in size within. 

21. Crease, a heavy dagger called "cursed" because of the terri- 
ble gashed wound it makes, owing to its form ; it has a waved blade 
set in the handle obliquely. 

22. Isles of palm, South-Sea islands. 

25. Agincourt, a famous battle (1415) of the time of chivalry, in 
which the English overthrew the French. 

26. Ascalon, a famous battle-ground (1099-1192) of the Crusades. 
The special reference may be to the last date, that of Richard Coeur 
de Lion's victory. 

27. Chronicle, the older word for a history. Froissart's Chronicle 
is a good example, and is still interesting reading for boys of spirit. 

31. Spent their whole lives in unrestrained warfare. 

35. Miracle, a stronger word for marvel. The exact meaning is a 
woman so surpassing in character as to seem above the reach of nat- 
ure to produce, but only admiration is expressed by the phrase. 

36. Strait, closely and hard. 



6 THE PRINCESS [Prologue 

By this wild king to force her to his wish, 

Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death, 

But now w^hen all was lost or seemed as lost — 

Her stature more than mortal in the burst 40 

Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire — 

Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, . 

And, falling on them like a thunderbolt. 

She trampled some beneath her horses' heels. 

And some were whelm'd with missiles of the wall. 

And some were push'd with lances from the rock, 

And part were drown'd within the whirling brook : 

miracle of noble womanhood ! " 

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle ; 
And, I all rapt in this, ^' Come out," he said, 50 

" To the Abbey : there is Aunt Elizabeth 
And sister Lilia with the rest/' We went 
(I kept the book and had my finger in it) 
Down thro' the park : strange was the sight to me ; 
For all the slo^^ing pasture murmur'd, sown 
With happy faces and with holiday. 
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads : 
The patient leaders of their Institute 
Taught them with facts. One rear'd a font of stone 
And drew, from butts of water on the slope, 60 

The fountain of the moment, playing, now 
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls. 
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball 

40. More than mortal, a phrase from the classics, equivalent to like 
a god. 

42. Brake, broke. 

57. The characteristic motion in a dense crowd is that of the 
heads. Notice throughout the following passage the attempt to 
heighten the prosaic detail of mechanical terms by the loveliness and 
color of the inserted iadjectives and phrases. 

63. Steep-up, perpendicular, a Shaksperian word; the ball is kept 
in the air, supported by the stream. 



Prologue] A MEDLEY 7 

-Danced like a wisp : and somewhat lower down 
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired 
A cannon : Echo answer'd in her sleep 
From hollow fields : and here were telescopes 
For azure views ; and there a group of girls 
In circle waited, whom the electric shock 
Dislink'd with shrieks and laughter : round the lake 70 
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied 
And shook the lilies : perchM about the knolls 
A dozen angry models jetted steam : 
A pretty railway ran : a fire-balloon 
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves 
And dropt a fairy joarachute and past : 
And there thro^ twenty posts of telegraph 
They flash^l a saucy message to and fro 
Between the mimic stations ; so that sport 
Went hand in hand with Science ; otherwhere 80 

Pure sport : a herd of boys with clamour bowFd 
And stumpM the wicket ; babies roll'd about 
Like tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids 
Arranged a country dance, and flew thro^ light 
And shadow, while the twangling violin 
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead 

64. Wisp, will-o'-the-wisp, the light seen in marshy places ; the 
metaphor is suggested by the motion and color of the ball. 

66. Echo, personified as a nymph. 

70. Dislinked. Dis — an alternative form for un — is coinmon in 
poetry. 

74. Fire-halloon, one infl.ated with heated air by means of a 
burning ball attached to it underneath. 

86. Soldier-laddie, 

' ' My soger laddie is over the sea. 
And he will bring gold and siller to me," etc. 
A favorite Scotch song, printed in Allan Cunningham's Songs of 
Scotland, 1825, vol. ii., p. 297. Words (under the title of the 
Soldier Laddie) and music seem to have appeared first in Thomp- 
son's Orpheus Caledonius, 1725. Burns is responsible for the state- 
ment that the first stanza is old, known before Thompson's time, and 



8 THE PRINCESS [Prologue 

The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime 

Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. 

Strange was the sight and smacking of the time ; 
And long we gazed, but satiated at length 90 

Came to the ruins. High-arch'd and ivy-claspt. 
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire. 
Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave 
The park, the crowd, the house ; but all within 
The sward was trim as any garden lawn : 
And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, 
And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends 
From neighbour seats : and there was Kalph himself, 
A broken statue propt against the wall. 
As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, 100 

Half child half woman as she was, had wound 
A scarf of orange round the stony helm. 
And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk. 
That made the old warrior from his ivied nook 
Glow like a sunbeam : near his tomb a feast 
Shone, silver-set ; about it lay the guests, 

that the rest is by Ramsay. See Stenhousc, Illustrations of the 
Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland, 1853, p. 310. 

87. Ambrosial, fragrant. 

89. The time, the contemporary age. The best poetic expression 
of the time that then was is in Tennyson's Locksley Ball, which is 
fully inspired with the larger excitement of "this march of mind." 

92. Gothic, of Gothic architecture ; contrasted with the Greek as 
a perpendicular with a horizontal line, or as a cone with a cube ; the 
Gothic carries the eye up toward heaven, the Greek detains it 
within the limits of the building offered to its view ; the mood of 
the one is endless aspiration, that of the other is completely realized 
beauty and majesty. 

93. Through the rent in the Abbey walls made by time and frost 
they disclosed. Notice the way in which the poet presents the outer 
landscape as framed in the ruined wall, and contrasts it with the 
small-scale picture within, though both are wrought out with equally 
careful detail. 

98. Seats, country seats. 



Prologue] A MEDLEY 9 

And there we join^I them : then the maiden Aunt 

Took this fair day for text, and from it preached 

An universal culture for the crowd, 

And all things great ; but we, unworthier, told 110 

Of college : he had climbM across the spikes. 

And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars, 

And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs ; and one 

Discussed his tutor, rough to common men, 

But honeying at the whisper of a lord ; 

And one the Master, as a rogue in grain 

VeneerM with sanctimonious theory. 

But while they talkM, above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad ; which brought 
My book to mind : and opening this I read 120 

Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang 
With tilt aiid tourney ; then the tale of her 
That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls. 
And much I praised her nobleness, and " Where," 
Ask'd Walter, patting Lilian's head (she lay 
Beside him) ^Mives there such a woman now ?" 

Quick answer\l Lilia '' There are thousands now 
Such women, but convention beats them down : 
It is but bringing up ; no more than that : 

108. This fair day, the holiday of the people, 

111, 112, He . . . he, this one and that. The "spikes " are on the 
walls of the college garden ; the " bars " on the windows of students' 
rooms. [These and the following collegiate notes follow Wallace,] 

113. Breathed the Proctor's dogs, tired out in the chase the 
Proctor's assistants who pursue students to arrest them, and are 
called in college slang "bull-dogs." The Proctor is a subordinate 
officer of college discipline. 

114. Tutor, an officer in charge of both education and discipline, 
and adviser of students under him. 

116. Master, head of a college. 

128. Convention, the need of conforming to social rules and 
usages, of doing the conventional, that which all do, not because it 
is reasonable, but because it is usual. 



10 THE PRINCESS [Prologue 

You men have done it : liow I hate you all ! 130 

Ah, were I something great ! I wish I were 

Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then. 

That love to keep us children ! I wish 

That I were some great Princess, I would build 

Far off from men a college like a man's. 

And I would teach them all that men are taught ; 

We are twice as quick ! " And here she shook aside 

The hand that playM the patron with her curls. 

And one said smiling " Pretty were the sight 
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 140 
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans. 
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. 
I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, 
But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ealph 
Who shines so in the corner ; yet I fear. 
If there were many Lilias in the brood. 
However deep you might embower the nest. 
Some boy would spy it."'' 

At this upon the sward 
She tapt her tiny silken-sandaFd foot : 
^'That^s your light way; but I would make it death 150 
For any male thing but to peep at us." 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugli'd ; 
A rusebud set with little wilful thorns. 
And sweet as English air could make her, she : 

141. Dowagers, wealthy widows of rank. 

Deans. The Dean is an officer at the head of the discipline, 
with other dignified duties. 

143. Gowns, the black college gowns worn by English collegians. 

144. Emperor-moths, " one of several large butterflies of the family 
Nymphalidae ; as, the purple Emperor, the popular name in Great 
Britain of Apatura Iris, also called the purple High- Flier.'' Cen- 
tury Dictionary. 

153, 154. The two lines are a favorable example of Tennyson's 
" prettiness," and also of the playful condescension to girlhood 
which pervades the lighter parts of the poem. 



Prologue] A MEDLEY H 

But Walter haiFd a score of names upon her, 

And ^' petty Ogress/^ and *' ungrateful Puss/' 

And swore he longM at college, only longM, 

All else was well, for she-society. 

They boated and they cricketed ; they talked 

At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics ; 160 

They lost their weeks ; they vext the souls of deans ; 

They rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends, 

And caught the blossom of the flying terms. 

But miss'd the mignonette of Vivian-place, 

The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke. 

Part banter, part affection. 

'' True," she said, 
" We doubt not that. yes, you miss'd us much. 
I'll stake my ruby ring upon it you did." 

She held it out ; and as a parrot turns 
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, 170 

And takes a lady's finger with all care. 
And bites it for true heart and not for harm. 
So he with Lilians. Daintily she shriek'd 
And wrung it. '' Doubt my word again ! " he said. 
*' Come, listen ! here is proof that you were miss'd : 
We seven stay'd at Christmas up to read ; 
And there we took one tutor as to read : 
The hard-grain'd Muses of the cube and square 
Were out of season : never man, I think. 



161. Lost their weeks. An English undergraduate must be in 
actual residence at his college a certain number of terms as a condi- 
tion of receiving a degree. Residence for a term is determined by 
his presence at dinner in the college during a certain number of 
weeks. By absence, beyond a certain limit, "they lose their weeks ; " 
that is, they cannot count the term in which such absences occur 
as a part of their residence. 

176. Head, the English college term for study. 

178. Mathematics. 



12 THE PRINCESS [Prologue 

So mouldered in a sinecure as he : 180 

For while our cloisters echoM frosty feet. 

And our long walks were stript as bare as brooms. 

We did but talk you over, pledge you all 

In wassail ; often, like as many girls — 

Sick for the hollies and the yews of home — 

As many little trifling Lilias — play'd 

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here. 

And zvJiafs my thought and when and where and hoio. 

And often told a tale from mouth to mouth 

As here at Christmas/^ 

She remember'd that : 190 

A pleasant game, she thought : she liked it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these — what kind of tales did men tell men. 
She wonder'd, by themselves ? 

A half-disdain 
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips : 
And Walter nodded at me ; '^ Re began, 
The rest would follow, each in turn ; and so 
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind ? what kind ? 
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, 

180. Sinecure, a place yielding income without labor, such as many 
posts in state, church, and college have traditionally been, 

181. Cloisters, covered walks adjoining the walls of a college, gen- 
erally about the inner quadrangle. 

182. Walks, avenues of trees such as that at Magdalen, known as 
** Addison's Walk." 

184. Wassail, the old English word for pledging healths, meaning 
"be well," and hence a term for a party at which healths are drunk. 

185. Hollies and the yews, the usual Christmas trimmings of an 
English home. 

199. Chimeras, here a general name for fabulous monsters. The 
Chimera of mythology was a monster, lion in the front, goat in the 
middle, dragon behind; he was represented as breathing fire, and 
also as having three heads, the lion's, the goat's, and the dragon's. 
[Hawthorne's Wonder-Book.'] 

Christmas solecisms, extravagances ; a solecism, in this sense, 
is anything out of the usual. 



Prologue] A MEDLEY 13 

Seven-headed monsters only made to kill 200 

Time by the fire in winter/' 

'^ Kill him now^ 
The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too/' 
Said Lilia ; '^Why not now ?" the maiden Aunt. 
*^ Why not a summer's as a winter's tale ? 
A tale for summer, as befits the time ; 
And something it should be to suit the place. 
Heroic, for a hero lies beneath. 
Grave, solemn ! " 

Walter warp'd his mouth at this 
To something so mock-solemn, that I laugh'd 
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth 210 

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker. 
Hid in the ruins ; till the maiden Aunt 
(A little sense of wrong had touch'd her face 
With colour) turn'd to me with '' As you will ; 
Heroic if you will, or what you will. 
Or be yourself your hero if you will." 

"Take Lilia, then, for heroine" clamour'd he, 
"And make her some great Princess, six feet high. 
Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you 
The Prince to win her ! " 

" Then follow me, the Prince," 220 
I answer'd, "each be hero in his turn ! 
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. — 
Heroic seems our Princess as required — 
But something made to suit with Time and place^ 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 
A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments 

204. A winter's tale. She alludes to Shakspere's play of that 
name ; cf. 231 below. 

208. Warp'd his mouth, presumably at the unintended pun, just 
such a one as the college boy only could observe. 



14 THE PRINCESS [Prologue 

For which the good Sir Ealph had burnt them all — 

This zvere a medley ! we should have him back 230 

Who told the ' Winter's tale ' to do it for us. 

No matter : we will say whatever comes. 

And let the ladies sing us, if they will. 

From time to time, some ballad or a song 

To give us breathing-space." 

So I began. 
And the rest followed : and the women sang 
Between the rougher voices of the men, 
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind : 
And here I give the story and the songs. 

229. Burnt, for witchcraft. 



L] A MEDLEY 15 



I. 



A Prince I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face. 
Of temper amorous, as the first of May, 
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl. 
For on my cradle shone the Northern star. 

There lived an ancient legend in our house. 
Some sorcerer, whom a far-off grandsire burnt 
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold, 
D3dng, that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall. 10 

For so, my mother said, the story ran. 
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less. 
An old and strange affection of the house. 
Myself too had weird seizures. Heaven knows what : 
On a sudden, in the midst of men and day. 
And while I walked and talk'd as heretofore, 
I seem'd to move among a world of ghosts, 

1. The first speaker here begins the story, 

7. Cast no shadow. The myth of the man who cast no shadow is 
not uncommon in modern Hterature. In the present instance the 
sorcerer had no shadow because he had sold his soul to Satan, on the 
theory explained in the following passage : "To understand the 
popular conceptions of the human soul or spirit, it is instructive to 
notice the words which have been found suitable to express it. The 
ghost or phantasm seen by the dreamer or the visionary is like a 
shadow, and thus the familiar term of the shade comes in to express 
the soul. . . . There are found among the lower races not only 
the types of those familiar classical terms, the sMa or umbra, but 
also what seems the fundamental thought of the stories of shadow- 
less [and hence soulless] men still current in the folklore of Europe, 
and familiar to modern readers in Chamisso's tale of Peter 
Schlemihl."— Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871, vol. i., p. 388. 

13. Affection, disease. 

14. Weird seizures. See Appendix, II., The Weird Seizures. 



16 THE PRINCESS [I. 

And feel myself the shadow of a dream. 

Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane. 

And paw'd his beard, and mutter'd " catalepsy/" 20 

My mother pitying made a thousand prayers; 

My mother was as mild as any saint. 

Half-canonized by all that looked on her. 

So gracious was her tact and tenderness : 

J3ut my good father thought a king a king ; 

He cared not for the affection of the house ; 

He held his sceptre like a pedant's wand 

To lash offence, and with long arms and hands 

Eeach^d out, and pick'd offenders from the mass 

For judgment. 

Now it chanced that I had been, 30 

While life was yet in bud and blade, betrothed 
To one, a neighbouring Princess : she to me 
Was proxy-wedded-with a bootless calf 
At eight years old ; and still from time to time 
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, 
And of her brethren, youths of puissance ; 
And still I wore her picture by my heart. 
And one dark tress ; and all around them both 
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen. 

19. Court-Galen, court physician. Galen was a Greek (area 130), 
and the name was long of great medical authority. The ' ' gilt-head 
cane " was characteristic of the physician in former times. 

20. Catalepsy, the name of the disease attributed to the Prince. 
33. Half-canofiized, respected almost as if she had been really 

placed in the canon, or catalogue, of the saints of the Roman Catholic 
Church. 

27. Pedanfs wand, schoolmaster's rod. 

33. Proxy-wedded, wedded with one who was the personal repre- 
sentative of the Prince, or his proxy. 

With a hootless calf. The representative of the groom placed 
his unbooted leg to the knee in the bridal bed. The ceremony so 
practised was a marriage. Its validity as a marriage, in the present 
case, was broken because the Prince and the Princess were not of an 
age to contract in the eyes of the law ; it could therefore be regarded 
only as an unusually formal betrothal. 



L] A MEDLEY 17 

But Avhen the days drew nigh that I should wed, 40 
My father sent ambassadors with furs 
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her : these brought back 
A present, a great labour of the loom ; 
And therewithal an answer vague as wind : 
Besides, they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; 
He said there was a compact ; that was true : 
But then she had a will ; was he to blame ? 
And maiden fancies ; loved to live alone 
Among her women ; certain, would not wed. - 

That morning in the presence-room I stood 50 

With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends : 
The first, a gentleman of broken means 
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts 
Of revel ; and the last, my other heart. 
And almost my half-self, for still we moved 
Together, twinn\l as horse's ear and eye. 

Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face 
Grow long and troubled, like a rising moon, 
Inflamed with wrath : he started on his feet. 
Tore the king's letter, snow'd it down, and rent 60 

The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof 
From skirt to skirt ; and at the last he sware 
That he would send a hundred thousand men, 
And bring her in a whirlwind : then he chew'd 
The thrice-turn'd cud of wrath, and cook'd his spleen, 
Communing with his captains of the war. 

53. Notice the characterization. Both Cyril and Florian remain 
to the end only what they are here stated to be — the first, a '* great- 
hearted gentleman," seeking to mend his means by a fit and ready 
wooing, yet without the baser touch of actual fortune-hunting; and 
the second a reflection of the Prince himself, his friend and other- 
self. The simile of the " horse's ear and eye " is, in its exactness, 
characteristic of Tennyson, but it is not noble. 

62. Sware, swore. 

65. Cook'd Ms spleen, a literal translation of a classical phrase 



18 THE PRINCESS [I. 

At last I spoke. " My father, let me go. 
It cannot be but some gross error lies 
In this report, this answer of a king 
Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable : 70 

Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen. 
Whatever my grief to find her less than fame. 
May rue the bargain made/' And Florian said : 
'' I have a sister at the foreign court. 
Who moves about the Princess ; she, you know. 
Who wedded with a nobleman from thence : 
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear. 
The lady of three castles in that land : 
Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean/' 
And Cyril whisper'd : ^^Take me with you too." 80 

Then laughing " what, if these weird seizures come 
Upon you in those lands, and no one near 
To point you out the shadow from the truth ! 
Take me : I'll serve you better in a strait ; 
I grate on rusty hinges here : " but " No ! " 
Eoar'd the rough king, ^'you shall not ; we ourself 
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead 
In iron gauntlets : break the council up." 

But when the council broke, I rose and past 
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town ; 90 

Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out ; 
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed 
In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees : 
What were those fancies ? wherefore break her troth ? 
Proud look'd the lips : but while I meditated, 

meaning nursed his ivrath, suppressing it until some action should 
be decided upon. 

84. Strait, difficulty. 

86. We ourself, the royal style of speech used throughout the 
poem by the Kings and the Princess. 

93. Dewy-tasselVd, budding with catkins. [Hallam Tennyson's 
note in Wallace.] 



I.] A MEDLEY 19 

A wind arose and rushed upon the South, 
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 
Of the wild woods together ; and a Voice 
Went with it, ''Follow, follow, thou shalt win." 

Then, ere the silver sickle of that month 100 

Became her golden shield, I stole from court 
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived. 
Cat-footed thro' the town and half in dread 
To hear my father's clamour at our backs 
With Ho ! from some bay-window shake the night ; 
But all was quiet : from the bastion'd walls 
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt. 
And flying reach'd the frontier : then we crost 
To a livelier land ; and so, by tilth and grange, 
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, 110 

We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers. 
And in the imperial palace found the king. 

His name was Gama ; crack'd and small his voice, 
But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind 
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines ; 
A little dry old man, without a star, 
Not like a king : three days he feasted us, 
And on the fourth I spake of why we came, 
And my betroth'd. "You do us. Prince," he said. 
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 120 

'^ All honour. We remember love ourselves 

100, 101. The poets often reckon time in a primitive way by the 
natural phenomena of the year, season, month, or day ; the prose 
of the lines is before the new moon became full. 

106. Bastion d. A bastion is a particular kind of fortification. 

109. Tilth, tilled ground. Grange, an outlying farmed estate, 
with special reference to its cluster of buildings. 

110. Bloiving bosks, blossoming wild shrubs in thickets. 

111. Mother-city, the metropolis, or capital city. 

116. Without a star, with no decoration of the orders of nobility. 
120. Signet ge^n, a seal ring, the token of his authority and will. 



20 THE PRINCESS [I. 

In our sweet youth : there did a compact pass 

Long summers back, a kind of ceremony — 

I think the year in which our olives faiFd. 

I would you had her. Prince, with all my heart. 

With my full heart : but there were widows here, 

Two widows. Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; 

They fed her theories, in and out of place, 

Maintaining that with equal husbandry 

The woman were an equal to the man. 130 

They harp'd on this : with this our banquets rang ; 

Our dances broke and buzz'd in knots of talk ; 

Nothing but this ; my very ears were hot 

To hear them : knowledge, so my daughter held, 

Was all in all ; they had but been, she thought. 

As children ; they must lose the child, assume 

The woman : then. Sir, awful odes she wrote. 

Too awful, sure, for what they treated of, 

But all she is and does is awful ; odes 

About this losing of the child ; and rhymes 140 

And dismal lyrics, prophesying change 

Beyond all reason : these the women sang ; 

And they that know such things — I sought but peace ; 

No critic I — would call them masterpieces : 

They mastered me. At last she begg'd a boon, 

A certain summer palace which I have 

Hard by your father's frontier : I said no. 

Yet being an easy man, gave it : and there. 

All wild to found an University 

For maidens, on the spur she fled ; and more 150 

We know not, — only this : they see no men, 

Not ev'n her brother Arac, nor the twins 

Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her 

As on a kind of paragon ; and I 

140. Losing of the child. Notice the phrase, which is a key-note of 
the poem: cf. also Frologue, 133. 
154. Paragon, a model of perfection. 



I.] A MEDLEY 21 

(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed 
Dispute betwixt myself and mine : but since 
(And I confess with right) you think me bound 
In some sort, I can give you letters to her ; 
And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance 
Almost at naked nothing." 

Thus the king ; 160 

And I, tho' nettled that he seemed to slur 
With garrulous ease and oily courtesies 
Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets 
But chafing me on fire to find my bride) 
Went forth again with both my friends. We rode 
Many a long league back to the North. At last 
From hills, that looked across a land of hope. 
We dropt with evening on a rustic town 
Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve, 
Close at the boundary of the liberties ; 170 

There, entered an old hostel, call'd mine host 
To council, plied him with his richest wines. 
And show'd the late-writ letters of the king. 

He, with a long low sibilation, stared 
As blank as death in marble ; then exclaimM 
Averring it was clear against all rules 
For any man to go : but as his brain 
Began to mellow, ^^If the king," he said, 
'^ Had given us letters, was he bound to speak ? 
The king would bear him out ; " and at the last — 180 
The summer of the viue in all his veins — 

161. Slur, pass over. 

163. Frets, hindrances ; the underlying idea is that of friction, 
something against which one rubs in passing. 

170. Liberties, an English legal term for adjacent privileged ter- 
ritory, here used of the outskirts of the estate within which the 
exclusive rights granted to the Princess were exercised. 

171. Hostel, hostelry, or tavern. 

174. Sibilation, not so loud as to be a whistle. 

181. Summer of the vine, the genial heat of the wine. 



22 THE PRINCESS [I. 

'^No doubt that we might make it worth his while. 

She once had past that way ; he heard her speak ; 

She scared him ; life ! he never saw the like ; 

She look'd as grand as doomsday and as grave : 

And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there ; 

He always made a point to post with mares ; 

His daughter and his housemaid were the boys : ' '' ■' 

The land, he understood, for miles about 

Was tilFd by women ; all the swine were sows, 190 

And all the dogs '' — 

But while he jested thus, 
A thought flashed thro' me which I clothed in act. 
Remembering how we three presented Maid , 
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast. 
In masque or pageant at my father's court. 
We sent mine host to purchase female gear ; 
He bought it, and himself, a sight to shake 
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp 
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes 
We rustled : him we gave a costly bribe 200 

To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds. 
And boldly ventured on the liberties. 

We foUow'd up the river as we rode. 
And rode till midnight when the college lights 

186. Liege-lady, sovereign lady, the Princess. 

187. Post, ride post or express ; that is, with relays of horses at 
fixed stations. 

188. Boys, post-boys. 

193. Presented, represented or played. 

194. High tide, the height of the festival ; tide as in Yule-tide. 

195. Masque or pageant, theatrical representations of a spectacu- 
lar sort, usually allegorical in character, with little action, — half- 
play, half-tableau, with songs and dances. The masques were espe- 
cially court sports, and the pageants had a more popular character. 
Milton's Comus is an example of a masque, and pageants are 
described in Scott's KenilwortJi. 

198. Holp, helped. 
201. Ouerdon, reward. 



L] A 3IEDLEY 23 

Began to glitter firefly-like in copse 

And linden alley : then we past an arch. 

Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings 

From four wing'd horses dark against the stars * 

And some inscription ran along the front, 

But deep in shadow : further on we gain'd 210 

A little street half garden and half house ; 

But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 

Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 

On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 

Of fountains spouted up and showering down 

In meshes of the jasmine and the rose : 

And all about us peal'd the nightingale, 

Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, 
By two sphere lamps blazon'd like Heaven and Earth 220 
With constellation and with continent. 
Above an entry : riding in, we calFd ; 
A plump-armed Ostleress and a stable wench 
Came running at the call, and helpM us down. 
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sail'd. 
Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave 
Upon a pillared porch, the bases lost 
In laurel : her we askM of that and this. 
And who were tutors. ^^ Lady Blanche ^^ she said, 
''And Lady Psyche/' ''Which was prettiest, 230 

209. Cf. II., 178. 

218. Her. The male is the song-bird, but the poets, following 
mythological tradition, according to which the nightingale was 
originally a woman, do not hold to the fact. Here the lines sug- 
gest the condition of the maiden scholars within the walls, the snare 
being the presence of the Prince and his companions. 

219. Pallas, goddess of wisdom, the patron of Athens. 

220. Blazoji'd, pictured ; one, with the constellations, represent- 
ing the heavenly sphere, the other, with the continents, representing 
the terrestrial globe. 

226. Oave, opened. 



^4 THE PRINCESS [I. 

Best-natured ? " " Lady Psyche/' " Hers are we/' 
One voice, we cried ; and I sat down and wrote, 
In such a hand as when a field of corn 
Bows all its ears before the roaring East : 
'' Three ladies of the Northern empire pray 
Your Highness would enroll them with your own, 
As Lady Psyche's pupils." 

This I seal'd : 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll. 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung. 
And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes : 240 

I gave the letter to be sent with dawn ; 
And then to bed, where half in doze I seem'd 
To float about a glimmering night, and Avatch 
A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight, swell 
On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. 

338. Cupid, the winged boy, god of love, represented as bhnd. 

239. Urmiian Verms, the heavenly Venus, or spiritual love. 
[Plato, Symposium.^ 

244. 3Iuffled, shining through thin vapor with even, diffused 
light. The Prince's dream is meant to show the state of his expect- 
ant mind, and reflects his first impression of the " land of hope." 



II.] A MEDLEY ^5 



II. 



As thro^ the land at eve we went, 

And pliick'd the ripen'd ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
_ we fell out I know not why. 

And kiss'd again with tears. 
And blessings on the falling out 

That all the more endears. 
When we fall out with those we love 

And kiss again with tears ! 
For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years. 
There above the little grave, 
there above the little grave. 

We kissM again with tears. 

The song is sung by one of the women of the poet's party ; cf. 
Prologue, 236. See Appendix, III., The Songs. 



26 THE PRINCESS [11. 



At break of day the College Portress came : 

She brought us Academic silks, in hue 

The lilac, with a silken hood to each. 

And zoned with gold ; and now when these were on 

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons. 

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 

The Princess Ida waited : out we paced, 

I first, and following thro^ the porch that sang 

All round with laurel, issued in a court 

Compact of lucid marbles, boss'd with lengths 10 

Of classic frieze, Avith ample awnings gay 

Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. 

The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, 

Enring'd a billowing fountain in the midst ; 

And here and there on lattice edges lay 

Or book or lute ; but hastily we past. 

And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

1. The second speaker here begins. 

2. Silks, the scholastic gown ; cf. Prologue, 143. 
G. Obeisa?ice, a formal bow. 

8. Sa7ig, murmured with the laurel's rustle. 

10. Compact, solid. 

Boss'd, embossed with long slabs of marble carved in relief 
(the figures standing out like the "boss" of a shield), such as were 
used in the frieze of the Greek temple. The most famous example 
is the frieze of the Parthenon, the temple of Pallas Athene at Athens. 

13. Muses and the Graces. The Muses, nine in number, Clio, 
Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, 
Urania, Calliope, presided, each in her own province, over poetry, 
art, and science. They were of divine nature, and, with Apollo their 
leader, as the god of poetry, they stand for the higher activities of 
human life as their spiritual patrons. The Graces, three in number, 
Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia, were merely personifications of 
female beauty. 



11. ] A MEDLEY 27 

There at a board by tome and paper sat. 
With two tame leopards coiich'd beside her throne, 
All beauty compassed in a female form, 20 

The Princess ; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, 
Than our man\s earth ; such eyes were in her head. 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 
From over her arcliM brows, with every turn 
Lived thro^ her to the tips of her long hands, 
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : 

" We give you welcome : not without redound 
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come, 
The first-fruits of the stranger : aftertime, 30 

And that full voice which circles round the grave. 
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. 
What ! are the ladies of your land so tall ? " 
'' We of the court '' said Cyril. '' From the court,'' 
She answerM, *^then ye know the Prince ?" and he : 
^' The climax of his age ! as tho' there were 
One rose in all the world, your Highness that. 
He worships your ideal : " she replied : 
" We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear 
This barren verbiage, current among men, 40 

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. 
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem 
As arguing love of knowledge and of power ; 
Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, ' 
We dream not of him : when we set our hand 
To this great work, we purposed with ourself 

31. TJiat full voice, fame. 

35. Notice the instant curiosity of the Princess about the Prince. 
She is always ready to hear of him, and has evidently always had 
him in mind a good deal. 

38. Your ideal, the image he has formed of you ; that is, " all he 
prefigured" (c/. III., 193). 

44. Child, cf. I., 40. 



28 THE PRINCESS [II. 

Never to wed. You likewise will do well. 

Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 

The tricks, which make us toys of men, that so. 

Some future time, if so indeed you will, 50 

You may with those self-styled our lords ally 

Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale/^ 

At those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, 
Perused the matting ; then an officer 
Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : 
Not for three years to correspond with home ; 
Not for three years to cross the liberties ; 
Not for three years to speak with any men ; 
And many more, which hastily subscribed. 
We enter'd on the boards : and ''Now,^' she cried, 60 
'' Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall ! 
Our statues ! — not of those that men desire. 
Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode. 
Nor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she 

48. Cast and fling, cast off and fling away. 

53. Conscious of ourselves, abashed by the fact of their disguise. 

55. Statutes, college laws ; cf. Shakspere, Love's Labor Lost, I., i. 

60. Entefd on the hoards, the English college term for register- 
ing as undergraduates. 

61. Our hall. Notice the universal allegory of a grandiose kind 
shown here and throughout the ideal decoration or mental furniture 
of the palace. Such statues, or portraits, are customary in English 
college halls, but their subjects are usually selected from the history 
of the college. 

63. Odalisques, beautiful female slaves of a Turkish harem. 
Mode, fashion. 

64. Sttmted squaws, women unnaturally deformed in obedience to 
a perverse custom or erroneous conception of beauty, such as the 
Flatheads of the North American Indians, or those of " little-footed 
China "(c/. II., 118). 

She, Egeria, a wood-nymph who gave laws to Numa Pom- 
pilius for the religious government of early Rome. He was the 
Sabine. 



II.] A MEDLEY 29 

That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 

The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 

The Oarian Artemisia strong in war. 

The Rliodope, that built the pyramid, 

Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 

Tliat fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows 70 

Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose 

Convention, since to look on noble forms 

Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism 

That which is higher. lift your natures up : 

Embrace our aims : work out your freedom. Girls, 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd : 

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave. 

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 

And slander, die. Better not be at all 

Than not be noble. Leave us : you may go : 80 

To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue 

65. She, Semiramis, the famous legendary Assyrian queen said to 
have built Babylon. 

67. Artemisia, the queen who fought at Salamis (480 b.c.) on the 
side of Xerxes. 

68. Rliodope, an English literary form of Rhodopis, an Egyptian 
woman celebrated for the act here mentioned, though it was wrongly 
ascribed to her. 

69. Clelia, a Roman heroine, who escaped from Porsenna, to whom 
she had been given as a hostage, by swimming the Tiber on horse- 
back. 

Cornelia (died circa 110 B.C.), daughter of the elder Scipio 
Africanus and the mother of the Gracchi, the ideal of Roman 
motherhood. 

Palmyrene, Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, who was captured 
by the Emperor Aurelian (272), and brought to Rome in triumph. 

71. Agrippina (13 B.C.-33 a.d.), an ideal Roman matron of the 
empire, granddaughter of Augustus, and wife of Germanicus, whom 
she accompanied on his campaigns in Germany. 

72. Convention, the conventional ideal of womanhood, which these 
women surpassed. 

73. Makes noble thro' the sensuous orga7iism,, a Platonic doctrine, 
often reproduced in poetry, that to look on beautiful things makes 
the soul itself beautiful through the eye. 



30 THE PRINCESS [II. 

The fresh arrivals of the week before ; 
For they press in from all the provinces. 
And fill the hive/' 

She spoke, and, bowing, waved 
Dismissal : back again we crost the court 
To Lady Psyche's : as we entered in. 
There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils ; she herself 
Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, 90 

A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, 
And on the hither side, or so she look'd. 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child. 
In shining draperies, headed like a star. 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 
Aglaia slept. We sat : the Lady glanced : 
Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame 
That whispered '^ Asses' ears," among the sedge, 
^' My sister." " Comely, too, by all that's fair," 
Said Cyril. " hush, hush ! " and she began. 100 

^' This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till toward the centre set the starry tides, 
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 

87. Forms, benches. The picture, the first of several such, though 
beautiful, has a touch of the condescension noticeable throughout 
the poem ; one easily sees in it " The hand that played the patron 
with her curls" {Prologue, 138). 

90. Notice the feminine tastes displayed in all the material furni- 
ture of the palace, and associate it as a general trait with that noted 
in line 61 above. 

93. A child. Notice the introduction of the child, an important 
element in the plot. See the Introduction. 

97. The dame, the wife of Midas, who, unable to keep the secret 
confided to her by her husband, that he had asses' ears, told it to the 
water by the sedge. Rolfe quotes Chaucer, Wife of Bath's Tale, as 
the authority followed by Tennyson. 

101-104. A brief statement of the theory of the evolution of the 
universe out of a nebular state. 



II.] A 3IEDLEY 31 

The planets : then the monster, then the man ; 
TattooM or woaded, winter-clad in skins. 
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest/^ 

Thereupon she took 
A bird^s-eye-view of all the ungracious past ; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon 110 

As emblematic of a nobler age ; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; 
Ean down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines 
Of empire, and the woman's state in each, 
How far from just ; till warming with her theme 
She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique 
And little-footed China, touched on Mahomet 
With much contempt, and came to chivalry : 

104. Monster, the vast animals of the early ages of the earth. 

105. Woaded, dyed with the blue of the woad-plant, as the ancient 
Britons were. 

106. Raw from the prime, just come into being, and untouched by 
any civility, the primitive barbarian ; the underlying suggestion is that 
this is man's true and original nature, fundamentally rude and brutal. 

110. Amazon, a nation of female warriors of Asia Minor, cele- 
brated in Greek legendary history. 

113. Appraised, estimated or weighed ; cf. (of a babe), Enoch Arden, 
"appraised his weight." 

Lycian custom, that of tracing descent by the female instead 
of the male line, in accordance with which family names were taken 
from the mother instead of the father. 

113. The Etruscan women are represented in wall paintings as 
feasting with their lords. Lucumo was the title of an Etruscan 
noble, the head of his family ; Jjar, that of his eldest son. 

117. Laws Salique. The Salic law excluded women from inheritance 
in land, and more particularly from the throne, in France. 

118. Little- footed. The feet of Chinese women are artificially dwarfed. 
Mahomet, the prophet of Islam, or the Mahometans, in whose 

religion the place of women is low. 

119. Chivalry, the times of the mediaeval knights, when the respect 
paid to women became devotion. 



32 TEE PRINCESS [II. 

When some respect^ however slight, was paid 120 

To woman, superstition all awry : 

However then commenced the dawn : a beam 

Had slanted forward, falling in a land 

Of promise ; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed. 

Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared 

To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, 

Hisyoke their necks from custom, and assert 

None lordlier than themselves but that which made 

Woman and man. She had founded ; they must build. 

Here might they learn whatever men were taught : 130 

Let them not fear : some said their heads were less : 

Some men^s were small ; not they the least of men ; 

For often fineness compensated size : 

Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew 

With using ; thence the man's, if more was more ; 

He took advantage of his strength to be 

First in the field : some ages had been lost ; 

But woman ripenM earlier, and her life 

Was longer ; and albeit their glorious names 

Were fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truth 140 

The highest is the measure of the man. 

And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, 

Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, 

126. Pales, fence : the word suggests also the sense of inclosiire or 
bound, and the force of the metaphor is to break the hounds of con- 
verition. 

131. The heads of some men, and those not the least in intellectual 
power, were small; the fineness of the brain fibre and the intricacy of 
its convolutions make up for the mere size and weight of the brain; 
and hence the smallness of women's heads does not necessarily imply 
inferiority of intellect. A second consideration is that the brain 
grows with use, and man had the advantage derived from earlier 
and greater use ; but as women come to maturity earlier than men, 
and live longer, that lost time may be made up. This argument 
does not invite much consideration. The third point in favor of 
woman's mental equality with man is that her capacity is to be 
measured by that of the greatest of the sex, as man's is. 

143. Horn-handed breakers of the glebe, peasants, clod-breakers. 



II.] A 3IEDLEY 33 

But Homer, Plato, Verulam ; even so 

With woman : and in arts of government, 

Elizabeth and others ; arts of war. 

The peasant Joan and others ; arts of grace, 

Sappho and others vied with any man : 

And, last not least, she who had left her place. 

And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow 150 

To use and power on this Oasis, lapt 

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight 

Of ancient influence and scorn. 

At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy 
Dilating on the future ; '' everywhere 
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 
Two in the tangled business of the world. 
Two in the liberal offices of life, 
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss 
Of science, and the secrets of the mind : 160 

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : 
And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth 
Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, 
Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." 

She ended here, and beckoned us : the rest 
Parted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she 
Began to address us, and was moving on 
In gratulation, till as when a boat 
Tacks, and the slackened sail flaps, all her voice 

144. Verulam, Bacon. Homer is here the measure of poetic power; 
Plato, of speculative philosophy; and Bacon, of experimental phi- 
losophy. 

146. Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth of England (1558-1603). 

147. Joan, Joan of Arc (1412-1431). 

148. Sappho, a Greek poetess (circa 600 B.C.). 

149. Place., her position in the court. 

156. Two heads, man and woman, instead of man alone. 

166. Parted, departed. 

168. Gratulation, congratulation. 



34 THE PRINCESS [II. 

Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried, 170 

'' My brother ! '' '' Well, my sister/' '' 0/' she said, 

'^ What do you here ? and in this dress ? and these ? 

Why, who are these ? a wolf within the fold ! 

A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! 

A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! '^ 

^' No plot, no plot,'' he answer'd. " Wretched boy. 

How saw you not the inscription on the gate, 

Let no mak enter in on pain of death ? " 

^' And if I had," he answer'd, " who could think 

The softer Adams of your Academe, 180 

sister. Sirens tho' they be, were such 

As chanted on the blanching bones of men ?" 

" But you will find it otherwise," she said. 

" You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! my vow 

Binds me to speak, and that iron will. 

That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, 

The Princess." ^' Well then. Psyche, take my life. 

And nail me like a weasel on a grange 

For warning : bury me beside the gate. 

And cut this epitaph above my bones ; 190 

Here lies a hrother hy a sister slain, 

All for the common good of ivomanhind.'^ 

'' Let me die, too," said Cyril, " having seen 

And heard the Lady Psyche." 

I struck in : 
'^ Albeit so mask'd. Madam, I love the truth ; 

178. (7/. I., 209. 

180. Softer Adams, the women who were trying to be all that men 
are. 

Academe, academy : the name suggests, in this form, Plato's 
academy, the source and pattern of the schools for higher instruc- 
tion and learning in ancient days. 

181. Sirens, sea-nymphs who, by their singing, fascinated sailors 
and drew them to shipwreck on the island rocks. 

188. Weasel on a grange. It was formerly a custom to nail on the 
barn-door any of the small wild creatures that commit petty depre- 
dations about a farm, as a warning to others of the species. 



II.] A MEDLEY 35 

Eeceive it ; and in me behold the Prince 

Your countryman^ afiianced years ago 

To the Lady Ida : here, for here she was, 

And thus (what other way was left) I came/^ 

'' sir, Prince, I have no country ; none ; 200 

If any, this ; but none. Whate'er I was 

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. 

Affianced, Sir ? love-whispers may not breathe 

Within this vestal limit, and how should I, 

Who am not mine, say, live : the thunderbolt 

Hangs silent ; but prepare : I speak ; it falls." 

'^ Yet pause,^^ I said : ^' for that inscription there, 

I think no more of deadly lurks therein. 

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth 

To scare the fowl from fruit : if more there be, 210 

If more and acted on, what follows ? war ; 

Your own work marrM : for this your Academe, 

Whichever side be Victor, in the halloo . 

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass 

With all fair theories only made to gild 

A stormless summer." '' Let the Princess judge 

Of that," she said : '^ farewell. Sir — and to you. 

I shudder at the sequel, but I go." 

^' Are you that Lady Psyche," I rejoin'd, 
'' The fifth in line from that old Florian, 220 

Yet hangs his portrait in my father^s hall 
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow 
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) 

205. Who am not mine, who have no will of my own, being sub- 
ject to the Princess. 

209. Clapper clapping, " A clack, or kind of small windmill, with 
a clapper set on the top of a pole, to frighten away birds. " Century 
Dictionary. 

Garth, enclosed fruit garden. 

222-223. Beetle brow Sun-shaded, jutting eyebrows, so shaggy as 
to shade the eyes from the sunlight in a fight. 



36 THE PRINCESS [II. 

As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell. 

And all else lied ? we point to it, and we say. 

The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold. 

But branches current yet in kindred veins/' 

" Are you that Psyche," Florian added ; " she 

With whom I sang about the morning hills. 

Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, 230 

And snared the squirrel of the glen ? are you 

That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow, 

To smoothe my pillow, mix the foaming draught 

Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 

My sickness down to happy dreams ? are you 

That brother-sister Psyche, both in one ? 

You were that Psyche, but what are you now ? '' 

" You are that Psyche," Cyril said, '^for whom 

I would be that for ever which I seem, 

AVoman, if I might sit beside your feet, 240 

And glean your scattered sapience/' 

Then once more, 
" Are you that Lady Psyche," I began, 
'' That on her bridal morn before she past 
From all her old companions, when the king 
Kiss'd her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties 
Would still be dear beyond the southern hills ; 
That were there any of onr people there 
In want or peril, there was one to hear 
And help them ? look ! for such are these and I." 
''Are you that Psyche," Florian ask'd, ''to whom, 250 
In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn 
Came flying while you sat beside the well ? 
The creature laid his muzzle on your lap, 

224. Bestrode, the characteristic posture as one stands over a 
fallen friend to defend him. 

227. Current, flowing. 

230. Raced the purple fly, raced witli {i.e., chased) the butterfly. 

241. Sapience, knowledge ; the word is belittling, and has an 
accent of raillery. 



II.] A 31EDLEY 37 

And sobbM, and you sobb'd with it, and the blood 

Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. 

That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. 

by the bright head of my little niece. 

You were that Psyche, and what are you now ? " 

'^ You are that Psyche," Cyril said again, 

"The mother of the sweetest little maid 260 

That ever crow'd for kisses.'' 

" Out upon it ! " 
She answer'd, " peace ! and why should I not play 
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be 
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind ? 
Him you call great : he for the common weal. 
The fading politics of mortal Eome, 
As I might slay this child, if good need were. 
Slew both his sons : and I, shall I, on whom 
The secular emancipation turns 

Of half this world, be swerved from right to save 270 
A prince, a brother ? a little will I yield. 
Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. 
hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear 
My conscience will not count me fleckless ; yet — 
Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise 
You perish) as you came, to slip away 
To-day, to-morrow, soon : it shall be said. 
These women were too barbarous, would not learn ; 
They fled, who might have shamed us : promise, all." 

What could we else, we promised each ; and she, 280 
Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced 

255. Kirtle, gown. 

263. Spartan 3IotJier with emotion, stamp emotion out ; a Spartan 
mother woukl sacrifice all personal affection for public duty. 

264. Lucius Junius Brutus, the estabUsher of the Koman Repubhc; 
when consul (509 b.c.) he condemned his sons to death for conspiring 
to restore the Tarquins to the throne, whence he had expelled them. 

269. Secular, lasting for ages (contrasted with line 266). 

270. Half, the woman-half. 



38 THE PRINCESS [II. 

A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused 
By Florian ; holding out her lily arms. 
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said : 
" I knew you at the first : tho' you have grown 
You scarce have altered : I am sad and glad 
To see you, Florian. /give thee to death,. 
My brother ! it was duty spoke, not I. 
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. 
Our mother, is she well ?" 

With that she kiss'd 290 
His forehead, then, a moment after, clung 
About him, and betwixt them blossom'd up 
From out a common vein of memory 
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth. 
And far allusion, till the gracious dews 
Began to glisten and to fall : and while 
They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice, 
^^I brought a message here from Lady Blanche/" 
Back started she, and turning round we saw 
The Lady Blanche^s daughter where she stood, 300 

Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, 
A rosy blonde, and in a college gown. 
That clad her like an April daffodilly 
(Her mother^s colour) with her lips apart. 
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes 
As bottom agates seen to wave and float 
In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 

So stood that same fair creature at the door. 
Then Lady Psyche, '^ Ah — Melissa — you ! 
You heard us?"" and Melissa, " pardon me 310 

I heard, I could not help it, did not wish : 
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, 
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast. 
To give three gallant gentlemen to death." 

304. The color worn by Lady Blanche's pupils. 



II.i A MF.DLEY 39 

'^I trust you/' said the other, '^^for we two 

Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine : 

But yet your mother's jealous temperament — 

Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove 

The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear 

This whole foundation ruin, and I lose 320 

My honour, these their lives." ^'' Ah, fear me not," 

Replied Melissa ; "no — I would not tell. 

No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness, 

No, not to answer. Madam, all those hard things 

That Sheba came to ask of Solomon." 

"Be it so" the other, "that we still may lead 

The new light up, and culminate in peace, 

For Solomon may come to Sheba yet." 

Said Cyril, "Madam, he the wisest man 

Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 330 

Of Lebanonian cedar : nor should you 

(Tho' Madam you should answer, we would ask) 

Less welcome find among us, if you came 

Among us, debtors for our lives to you. 

Myself for something more." He said not what. 

But "Thanks," she answer'd ; " Go : we have been too long 

Together; keep your hoods about the face; 

They do so that affect abstraction here. 

316. Elm and vine, like the elm and the vine that clings about it. 

319. Danaid of a leaky vase. The Danai'des were the fifty daughters 
of Danaiis, who killed their husbands; in Hades they have for punish- 
ment the task of eternally pouring water into sieves. The sense is, 
do not be one to let the secret leak out. 

820. ^Y^lole foimdation ruin, the college and its purpose be ruined. 

333. Aspasia (440 b. c), the most famous intellectual woman of 
Greece, the friend of Pericles, and the centre of the group about him 
in Athens. 

325. Sheba. The Queen of Sheba visited Solomon because of his 
wisdom. 1 Kings x. 1-13 ; 2 Chronicles ix. 1-12, 

335. Something more, his love for her. 

338. Affect abstraction, pretend to be absorbed in thought and 
study. 



40 THE PRINCESS [II. 

Speak little ; mix not with the rest ; and hold 

Your promise : all, I trust, may yet be well/^ 340 

We turned to go, but Cyril took the child. 
And held her round the knees against his waist. 
And blew the swoU'n cheek of a trumpeter. 
While Psyche watch'd them, smiling, and the child 
Push'd her flat hand against his face and-lauglrd; 
And thus our conference closed. 

And then we strolFd 
For half the day thro' stately theatres 
BenchM crescent- wise. In each we sat, we heard 
The grave Professor. Ou the lecture slate 
The circle rounded under female hands 350 

With flawless demonstration : followed then 
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment. 
With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out 
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies 
And quoted odes, and jewels five- words-long 
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time 
Sparkle for ever : then we dipt in all 
That treats of whatsoever is, the state. 
The total chronicles of man, the mind. 
The morals, something of the frame, the rock, 360 

The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, 

348. Bench'd crescent-ivise, each row of seats like a crescent, as in 
ordinary theatres. 

350. Circle rounded, in mathematical demonstrations. 

353. Lilted, intoned or spoken with a chanting voice. 

355. Jeivels five-ivords-long , short, immortal phrases, perfect in 
expression, which are well known ; such as are to be found in Shak- 
spere, Virgil, or other poets. 

357-59. All, universal knowledge, politics, history, metaphysics, 
ethics. 

360-62. Frame, the universal physical frame of things ; and, in 
detail, the sciences, geology, astronomy, ornithology, ichthyology, 
conchology, botany, electricity, chemistry, and the rest. Wallace 
explains /rawe as man's frame, i. e., physiology. 



II.] A MEDLEY 41 

Electric, cliemic laws, and all the rest, 

And whatsoever can be taught and known ; 

Till like three horses that have broken fence. 

And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn. 

We issued gorged witli knowledge, and I spoke : 

*' Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." 

'^ They hunt old trails^' said Cyril '' very well ; 

But when did woman ever yet invent ? " 

'' Ungracious ! " answer'd Florian ; " have you learnt 370 

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talk\l 

The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ?" 

^^ trash " he said, '^ but with a kernel in it. 

Should I not call her wise, who made me wise ? 

And learnt ? I learnt more from her in a flash, 

Than if my brainpan were an empty hull. 

And every Muse tumbled a science in. 

A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, 

And round these halls a thousand baby loves 

Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, 380 

Whence follows many a vacant pang ; but 

With me, Sir, entered in the bigger boy. 

The Head of all the golden-shafted firm, 

The long-limb'd lad that had a Psyche too ; 

He cleft me thro' the stomacher ; and now 

What think you of it, Florian ? do I chase 

The substance or the shadow ? will it hold ? 

I have no sorcerer's malison on me, 

No ghostly hauntings like his Highness. I 

Flatter myself that always everywhere 390 

I know the substance when I see it. Well, 

376. Brainpa7i, the part of the skull about the brain. 

379. Baby loves, baby Cupids. 

383. Boy, Cupid himself, the god, the child of Venus. He fell 
in love with Psyche, and their adventures are the subject of a 
beautiful classical romance. 

383. Golden-shafted firm, the firm of the golden-shafted arrows. 

385. Stomacher, a part of female dress, worn in front. 

388. Malison, curse. 



43 THE PRINCESS [II. 

Are castles shadows ? Three of them ? Is she 

The sweet proprietress a shadow ? If not. 

Shall those three castles patch my tatter'd coat ? 

For dear are those three castles to my wants. 

And dear is sister Psyche to my heart, 

And two dear things are one of double worth, 

And much I might have said, but that my zone 

Unmanned me : then the Doctors ! to hear 

The Doctors ! to watch the thirsty plants 400 

Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar. 

To break my chain, to shake my mane : but thou. 

Modulate me. Soul of mincing mimicry ! 

Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; 

Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet 

Star-sisters answering under crescent brows ; 

Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose 

A flying charm of blushes o'er tliis cheek. 

Where they like swallows coming out of time 

Will wonder why they came : but hark the bell 410 

For dinner, let us go ! '' 

And in we streamed 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end 
With beauties every shade of brown and fair 
In colours gayer than the morning mist, 
The long hall glitter'd like a bed of flowers. 
How might a man not wander from his wits 
Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own 
Intent on her, who rapt in glorious dreams, 
The second-sight of some Astr^ean age, 420 

394. Her wealth shall make good his poverty. The metaphor sug- 
gests heraldry, as if the castles were placed upon his coat of arms. 

403. Mincing, making less by affected nicety and delicacy. 

404. Bassoon, a wood wind-instrument, the bass among instru- 
ments of its class, here used as a metaphor of his deep-toned voice. 

420. Second-sight, prophetic vision. 

Astrcean age. Astriea, the goddess of justice, was the last of 



II.] A MEDLEY 43 

Sat compass^ with professors : they, the while, 
Discuss'd a doubt and tost it to and fro : 
A clamour thickenM, mixt with inmost terms 
Of art and science : Lady Blanche alone 
Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments. 
With all her autumn tresses falsely brown. 
Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat 
In act to spring. 

At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens : there 
One walked reciting by herself, and one 430 

In this hand held a volume as to read. 
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that : 
Some to a low song oar^d a shallop by. 
Or under arches of the marble bridge 
Hung, shadow'd from the heat : some hid and sought 
In the orange thickets : others tost a ball 
Above the fountain-jets, and back again 
With laughter : others lay about the lawns. 
Of the older sort, and murmured that their May 
AVas passing : what was learning unto them ? 440 

They wished to marry ; they could rule a house ; 
Men hated learned women : but we three 
Sat muffled like the Fates ; and often came 
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts 
Of gentle satire, kin to charity. 

That harm'd not : then day droopt ; the chapel bells 
Caird us : we left the walks ; we mixt with those 
Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, 

the divinities to leave the earth at the close of the golden age, and 
will return when it is restored. 

423. Inmost, most technical and abstruse. 

433. Shallop,' a small hoat. 

435. ITid and sought, played hide and seek. 

443. The Fates, three in number, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, 
represented as muffled because they hold the future in their breasts. 

448. White, a surplice worn over the ordinary dress by students 
attending chapel. 



44 THE PRINCESS [11. 

Before two streams of light from wall to wall. 

While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 450 

Groaning for power, and. rolling thro^ the court 

A long melodious thunder to the sound 

Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies. 

The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven 

A blessing on her labours for the world. 

453. Silver litanies, responsive prayers ; silver perhaps with 
reference to the feminine voices. 



III.] A 3IEDLEY 45 



III. 



Sweet and low, sweet and low. 

Wind of the western sea. 
Low, low, breathe and blow. 

Wind of the western sea ! 
Over the rolling waters go. 
Come from the dying moon, and blow. 

Blow him again to me ; 
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest. 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Eest, rest, on mother's breast, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Father will come to his babe in the nest. 
Silver sails all out of the west 

Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 



46 THE PIUNGESS [III. 



MoRN" in the white wake of the morning star 
Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 
We rose, and each by other drest with care 
Descended to the court that lay three parts 
In shadow, but the Muses^ heads were touched 
Above the darkness from their native East. 

There while we stood beside the fount, and watchM 
Or seemM to watch the dancing bubble, approach'd 
Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep. 
Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes 10 

The circled Iris of a night of tears ; 
^' And ily,'^ she cried, ^' fly, while yet you may ! 
My mother knows : ^' and when I ask^d her " how," 
^' My fault, "" she we|)t, ^' my fault ! and yet not mine ; 
Yet mine in jiart. hear me, pardon me. 
My mother, ^tis her wont from night to night 
To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. 
She says the Princess should have been the Head, 
Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; 
And so it was agreed when first they came ; 20 

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now, 
And she the left, or not, or seldom used ; 
Hers more than half the students, all the love. 
And so last night she fell to canvass you : 

I. The third speaker begins here. The two opening lines are 
among the most beautiful in Tennyson, many of whose descriptions of 
morning have the highest poetical quality ; he is, in fact, distinguished 
among English poets by them, and especially in the point that they 
are as brief as lovely. 

9. Tinged with wan, pale. 

II. Circled Iris, dark rings. 

17. Side, the English college term for school as a subdivision of 
the university. 



III.] A 3IEDLEY 47 

Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her. 

^ Who ever saw such wild barbarians ? 

Girls ? — more like men ! ' and at these words the snake. 

My secret, seem'd to stir within my breast ; 

And oh, Sirs, could I help it, but my cheek 

Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye 30 

To fix and make me hotter, till she laugh'd : 

'0 marvellously modest maiden, you ! 

Men ! girls, like men ! why, if they had been men 

You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus 

For wholesale comment/ Pardon, I am shamed 

That I must needs repeat for my excuse 

What looks so little graceful : *men^ (for still 

My mother went revolving on the word) 

' And so they are, — very like men indeed — 

And with that woman closeted for hours ! ^ 40 

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 

' Why — these — are — men:' I shudder'd: ' and you know it/ 

"^0 ask me nothing,^ I said : '^ And she knows too. 

And she conceals it/ So my mother clutclrd 

The truth at once, but with no word from me ; 

And now thus early risen she goes to inform 

The Princess : Lady Psyche will be crush'd ; 

But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly : 

But heal me with your pardon ere you go." 

" What pardon, sweet Melissa, for a blush ? " 50 

Said Cyril : ^''Pale one, blusli again : than wear 
Those lilies, better blush our lives away. 
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven " 
He added, ''Mest some classic Angel speak 

34. Rubric, red (by her blushes), as certain letters or words are 
written in red or rubric in old manuscripts or books, and so stand 
out prominently and are easily read on the page, 

54. Classic Angel, "sweet girl graduate " who knows the classics ; 
the phrase glances at the women of the College into whose mode of 
speech, with plentiful classical allusion, Cyril falls. 



48 THE PRINCESS [III. 

In scorn of us, ' They mounted, Ganymedes, 
To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn/ 
But I will melt this marble into wax 
To yield us farther furlough : "" and he went. 

Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought 
He scarce would prosper. ^^Tell us/" Florian ask'd, 60 
*^How grew this feud betwixt the right and left." 
^' long ago,'" she said, " betwixt these two 
Division smoulders hidden ; "tis my mother. 
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind 
Pent in a crevice : much I bear with her : 
I never knew my father, but she says 
(God help her) she was wedded to a fool ; 
And still she rail'd against the state of things. 
She had the care of Lady Ida's youth, 
And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. 70 
But when your sister came she won the heart 
Of Ida : tliey were still together, grew 
(For so they said themselves) inosculated; 
Consonant chords that shiver to one note; 

55. Ganymedes. The Trojan boy Ganymede was seized by the eagle 
of Zeus and carried to Olympus, where he was made immortal as 
the cup-bearer of the gods. 

56. Vulcans. Vulcan, the god of metal-working, was the son of 
Juno. Zeus hurled him from heaven ; he fell on Lemnos, and was 
lame ever after. He made armor for the gods and heroes in his 
workshop in Mount Etna. 

61. Right and left, right and left hand {ef. III., 19). 

73. Inosculated, closely united in one ; explained as a metaphor 
from physiology ; but Wallace rightly traces the meaning here 
directly to osculare, to kiss, and so gives the true color to the 
thought. 

74. Shiver, vibrate ; the meaning is that the two friends were so 
inwardly harmonious that each responded to the other in mood and 
thought naturally, just as in the case of two musical instruments 
if a chord is struck in one the same chord of the other vibrates with 
the same note. Dawson explains to as into, i.e., chords whose notes 
blend in one inseparably. 



III.] A 3IEDLEY 49 

One mind Jn all things : yet my mother still 

Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories, 

And angled with them for her pupiFs love : 

She calls her plagiarist ; I know not what : 

But I must go : I dare not tarry /^ and light. 

As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. 80 

Then murmur^l Florian gazing after her, 
''An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. 
If I could love, why this were she : how pretty 
Her blushing was, and how she blusliM again. 
As if to close with CyriFs random wish : 
Kot like your Princess crammed with erring pride, 
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.'^ 

'' The crane," I said, '^ may chatter of the crane. 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I 
An eagle clang an eagle to the sphere, 90 

My princess, my princess ! true she errs. 
But in her own grand way : being herself 
Three times more noble than three score of men. 
She sees herself in every woman else. 
And so she wears her error like a crown 
To blind the truth and me : for her, and her, 
Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix 
The nectar ; but — ah she — whenever she moves 
The Samian Here rises and she speaks 
A Memnon smitten with the morning Sun." 100 

77. Angled 'with them, used them as baits, fishing for favor. 

78. Plagiarist, a brain-thief ; one who steals thoughts or words of 
another. 

90. Sphere, the highest, or the upper air. 

96. Jler, and her, Lady Psyche and Melissa. 

97. Hehes. Hebe was the cup-bearer of the gods before Ganymede. 

99. Samian Here, wife of Zeus, whose favorite city was Samos. 

100. Memnon, a name given to a colossal statue in Egypt, said to 
give forth a musical sound on being touched by the dawn's rays. 



50 THE PRINCESS [III. 

So saying from the court we pacecl^ and gained 
The terrace ranged along the Northern fronts 
And leaning there on those balusters^ high 
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 
That blown about the foliage underneath. 
And sated with the innumerable rose. 
Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came 
Cyril, and yawning '' hard task," he cried ; 
'' No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way 
Thro' solid opposition crabb'd and gnarl'd. 110 

Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump 
A league of street in summer solstice down. 
Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 
I knock'd and, bidden, enter'd ; found her there 
At point to move, and settled in her eyes 
The green malignant light of coming storm. 
Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oil'd. 
As man's could be ; yet maiden-meek I pray'd 
Concealment : she demanded who we were. 
And why we came ? I fabled nothing fair, 120 

But, your example pilot, told her all. 
Up went the hush'd amaze of hand and eye. 
But when I dwelt upon your old affiance. 
She answered sharply that I talk'd astray. 

103. Balusters, the balustrade. 

104. Champaign, a level, open landscape. 
OaU, gentle blowing breeze, 

111. Prime, primeval. 

112. Work at road-making in the hottest season. The summer 
solstice occurs in the north June 31, and denotes the point at which 
the sun appears to stand still in his northern progress before retro- 
grading (going back) southward. 

115. At point, on the point of, 

120. Fabled notJmig fair, made up no plausible lie. 

121. Example. Cf. II., 195. 

122. Notice that the description of Lady Blanche is given largely 
by telling her gestures. 

123. Affiance, betrothal. 



III.] A 3IEDLEY 51 

I urged the fierce inscription on the gate. 

And our three lives. True — we had limed ourselves 

With open eyes, and we must take the chance. 

But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 

The woman's cause. * Not more than now,' she said, 

' So puddled as it is with favouritism.' 130 

I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall 

Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew : 

Her answer was, ''Leave me to deal with that.' 

I spoke of war to come and many deaths. 

And she replied, her duty was to speak. 

And duty duty, clear of consequences. 

I grew discouraged. Sir ; but since I knew 

No rock so hard but that a little wave 

May beat admission in a thousand years, 

I recommenced ; ^ Decide not ere you pause. 140 

I find you here but in the second j^lace, 

Some say the third — the authentic foundress you. 

I offer boldly : we will seat you highest ; 

"Wink at our advent : help my prince to gain 

His rightful bride, and here I promise you 

Some palace in our land, where you shall reign 

The head and heart of all our fair she-world. 

And your great name fiow on with broadening time 

For ever.' Well, she balanced this a little. 

And told me she would answer us to-day, 150 

Meantime be mute : thus much, nor more I gain'd." 

He ceasing, came a message from the Head. 
^' That afternoon the Princess rode to take 
The dip of certain strata to the North. 
Would we go with her ? we should find the land 

126. Limed, caught as a bird with bird-lime. 
138. Extremes, such as the execution of the penalty threatened. 
136. Clear of, regardless of. 

153, 154. Talce The dip of certain strata, measure their inclination 
to the horizon. 



52 THE PRINCESS [III. 

Worth seeing ; and the river made a fall 
Out yonder : " then she pointed on to where 
A double hill ran up his furrowy forks 
Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. 

Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all 160 

Its range of duties to the appointed hour. 
Tlien summouM to the porch we went. She stood 
Among her maidens, higher by the head. 
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one 
Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he rolFd 
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near ; 
I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came 
Upon me, the weird vision of our house : 
The Princess Ida seem'd a hollow show. 
Her gay-furrM cats a painted fantasy, 170 

Her college and her maidens, empty masks. 
And I myself the shadow of a dream, 
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt 
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; 
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh 
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes 
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook 
My pulses, till to horse we got, and so 
Went forth in long retinue following up 
The river as it narrow'd to the hills. 180 

I rode beside hei-, and to me she said : 
" friend, we trust that you esteemed us not 
Too harsh to your companion yestermorn ; 
Unwillingly we spake." '^~^o — not to her,'' 
I answer'd, ^^but to one of whom we spake 

159. Platans, plane-trees, 

179. Retinue, with the accent on the second syllable, as in Shak- 
spere and Milton. 

183. Yestermorn. Cf. II., 89. 
185, One, the Prince. 



III.] A MEDLEY 53 

Your Highness might have seemed the thing you say." 
'* Again ?" she cried, '^are you ambassadresses 
From him to me ? we give you, being strange, 
A license : speak, and let the topic die/' 

I stammered that I knew him — could have wishM — 190 
'* Our king expects — was there no precontract ? 
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem 
All he prefigured, and he could not see 
The bird of passage flying south but long'd 
To follow : surely, if your Highness keep 
Your purport, you will shock him ev'n to death, 
Or baser courses, children of despair." 

" Poor boy," she said, ^' can he not read — no books ? 
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games ? nor deals in that 
Which men delight in, martial exercise ? 200 

To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, 
Methinks he seems no better than a girl ; 
As girls were once, as we ourself have been : 
We had our dreams ; perhaps he mixt with them : 
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it. 
Being other — since we learnt our meaning here. 
To lift the woman's fall'n divinity 
Upon an even pedestal with man." 

She paused, and added with a haughtier smile, 
'' And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, 210 

At no man's beck, but know ourself and thee, 
Vashti, noble Vashti ! Summon'd out 
She kept her state, and left the drunken king 
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms." 

186. Thing you say, too harsh. 

188. Strange, foreign. 

194. Bird, swallow. Cf. IV., 71. 

199, Tennis, court-tennis. 

212. Vashti, queen of Ahasuerus. Esther i. 10-12. 



54 THE PRINCESS [III. 

'' Alas your Highness breathes full East/' I said, 
'' On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, 
I prize his truth : and then how vast a work 
To assail this gray preeminence of man ! 
You grant me license ; might I use it ? think ; 
Ere half be done perchance your life may fail ; 220 

Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan. 
And takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains 
May only make that footprint upon sand 
Which old recurring waves of prejudice 
Resmooth to nothing : might I dread that you. 
With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds 
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. 
Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due, 
Love, children, happiness V 

And she exclaimM, 
*^ Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! 230 
What ! tho' your Prince's love were like a God's, 
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice ? 
You are bold indeed : we are not talk'd to thus : 
Yet will we say for children, would they grew 
Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well : 
But children die ; and let me tell you, girl, 
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die ; 
They with the sun and moon renew their light 
For ever, blessing those that look on them. 
Children — that men may pluck them from our hearts, 240 
Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves — 
— children — there is nothing upon earth 

215, Full East, like an east wind. 

226. Spouse, wife. 

227. Issue, children, 

232. Devoted herself in self-sacrifice to her cause, 

241. Ourselves. The chihlren are so much a part of the mother's 

life as to be her real self, the self through which she suffers moi'e 

than in her single life. 



III.] A 3IEDLEY 55 

More miserable than she that has a son 

And sees him err : nor would we work for fame ; 

Tho^ she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, 

Who learns the one pou STO whence after-hands 

May move the world, tho' she herself effect 

But little : wherefore up and act, nor shrink 

For fear our solid aim be dissipated 

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, 250 

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race 

Of giants living, each, a thousand years. 

That we might see our own work out, and watch 

The sandy footprint harden into stone/^ 

I answered nothing, doubtful in myself 
If that strange Poet-princess with her grand 
Imaginations might at all be won. 
And she broke out interpreting my thoughts : 

'' No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; 
We are used to that : for women, up till this 260 

Oramp'd under worse than South-sea-isle taboo. 
Dwarfs of the gynseceum, fail so far 
In high desire, they know not, cannot guess. 
How much their welfare is a passion to us. 
If we could give them surer, quicker proof — 
Oh if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches, than by single act 

246. Pou sto, the phrase of Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), the most 
celebrated ancient physicist : Sdi nov 6T(a uai Hodjuov Hir?}dGO, 
" Give me where to stand and I will move the world." 

250-254. Would that, instead of being short-lived, like flies, we 
were able to live, like the giants, a thousand years, so that we might 
see our work, which requires a long age, slowly accomplished. • 

254. Sandy footprint. Footprints of birds and animals are some- 
times found petrified. 

261. South-sea-isle taboo, a system of interdiction, so regulated 
in the South Sea islands among the aborigines as to be an institution. 

262. Gynceceum, the woman's quarters in houses where the sexes 
are separated. 



56 THE PRINCESS - [III. 

Of immolation, any phase of death. 

We were as prompt to spring against the pikes. 

Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it, 270 

To compass our dear sisters' liberties." 

She bow'd as if to veil a noble tear ; 
And up we came to where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods. 
And danced the colour, and, below, stuck out 
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roared 
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, 
'^ As these rude bones to us, are we to her 
That will be." '' Dare we dream of that," I ask'd, 280 
'^ Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, 
That practice betters ?" " How," she cried, ^'you love 
The meta]3hysics ! read and earn our jirize, 
A golden brooch : beneath an emerald phme 
Sits Diotima, teaching him that died 
Of hemlock ; our device ; wrought to the life ; 

208. Self-sacrifice by any kind of death. 

269. As the Swiss, Arnold von Winkelried, at Sempach (1388), broke 
tlie impregnable line of Austrian spears by rushing on thera, crying 
the famous words, " Make way for liberty ! " Wallace refers to the 
sacrifice of the Roman, Publius Decius Mus (340 B.C.), who rushed 
on the spears of the enemy to his death, in the belief that it was fated 
that the general of the victorious army must perish. 

270. As the Roman, Marcus Curtius (3G2 B.C.), leaped, on horse- 
back and in armor, into the chasm at Rome, devoting himself a 
sacrifice to the gods. 

276. The colour, the rainbow. 

277. Bones, the fossil remains of some mastodon or other 
mmistrous animal of prehistoric times. 

280. Dare we dream of the creative power that made us as if he 
were a workman who grows more skilful by practice ? 

285. Diotima, the prophetess said to have been the instructor of 
Socrates. 

286. Hemlock. Socrates was condemned to die by drinking 
hemlock. 



III.] A MEDLEY §7 

She rapt upon her subject, he on her : 

For there are schools for all." '' And yet " I said 

'' Metliinks I have not found among them all 

One anatomic." '' Nay, we thought of that," 290 

She answer'd, '^ but it pleased us not : in truth 

We shudder but to dream our maids should ape 

Those monstrous males that carve the living hound, 

And cram him with the fragments of the grave. 

Or in the dark dissolving human heart. 

And holy secrets of this microcosm, 

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 

Encarnalize their spirits : yet we know 

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs : 

Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, 300 

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt. 

For many weary moons before we came. 

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 

Would tend upon you. To your question now. 

Which touches on the workman and his work. 

Let there be light and there was light : ^tis so : 

For was, and is, and will be, are but is ; 

And all creation is one act at once. 

The birth of light : but we that are not all. 

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 310 

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 

One act a phantom of succession : thus 

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow. Time ; 

But in the shadow will we work, and mould 

290. Anatomic, school of anatomy. 

293. Those who practise vivisection. 

296. 3Iicrocosm, the little world of the human body. 

298. Encarnalize, steep in sense till they become carnal or all 
fleshly ; sensualize. 

299. Hangs, is undecided. 

300. Casualty, accident. 

306-314. These lines state a philosophical theory which cannot be 
easily comprehended by young students, and may best be passed 
over. 



58 THE PRINCESS [III. 

The woman to the fuller day/^ 

She spake 
With kindled eyes : we rode a league beyond. 
And, o'er a bridge of pine wood crossing, came 
On flowery levels underneath the crag, 
Full of all beauty. '^ how sweet " I said 
(For I was half-oblivious of my mask) 320 

" To linger here with one that loved us/' " Yea," 
She answer'd, ^' or with fair philosophies 
That lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields 
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns. 
Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw 
The soft white vapour streak the crowned towers 
Built to the Sun : " then, turning to her maids, 
'' Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; 
Lay out the viands/' At the word, they raised 
A tent of satin, elaborately wrought 330 

With fair Corinna's triumph ; here she stood. 
Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek. 
The woman-conqueror ; woman-conquer'd there 
The bearded Victor of ten thousand hymns. 
And all the men mourn'd at his side : but we 
Set forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept 
AVith Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I 
With mine affianced. Many a little hand 
Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks. 
Many 'a light foot shone like a jewel set 340 

In the dark crag : and then we turn'd, we wound 
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, 

324. Elysian laivns. Elysium was the abode of the blessed after 
death, sometimes placed in the Islands of the Blest, to which Tenny- 
son himself refers this passage. The Demigods are the heroes of 
antiquity. 

331. Corinna's triumph. Corinna, the Greek poetess, overcame 
Pindar (522-442 b.c), the most famous Greek writer of odes, several 
times in the trial for the prize of poetry at the public games. 

834. Victor, Pindar. 



III.] A MEDLEY 59 

Hammeriug and clinking, chattering stony names 
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff. 
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun 
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 
The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 

344, 345. Names of different kinds of stone. 

347. Notice how the close corresponds with the opening of this 
part. 



60 TEE PRINCESS [IV. 



IV. 

The splendour falls on castle walls 
And snowy summits old in story : 
The long light shakes across the lakes. 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

hark, hear I how thin and clear, 

And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

love, they die in yon rich sky. 

They faint on hill or field or river : 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul. 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 61 



'' There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, 

If that hypothesis of theirs be sound/' 

Said Ida ; " let us down and rest ;''' and we 

Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices. 

By every coppice-feather'd chasm and cleft, 

Dropt thro" the ambrosial gloom to where below 

No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent 

Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she lean'd on me. 

Descending ; once or twice she lent her hand. 

And blissful palpitations in the blood, 10 

Stirring a sudden transport rose and fell. 

But when we planted level feet, and dipt 
Beneath the satin dome and entered in, 
There leaning deep in broiderM down we sank 
Our elbows : on a tripod in the midst 
A fragrant flame rose, and before us glowM 
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. 

Then she, '' Let some one sing to us ; lightlier move 
The minutes fledged with music : " and a maid. 
Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. 20 

^' Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

'' Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 
That brings our friends up from the underworld, 

1. The fourth speaker here begins. 

2, Hypothesis, the nebular hypothesis {cf. II., 101). 
17. Oold, gold plate. 

27. Underworld, below the horizon. 



62 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

Sad as the last which reddens over one 

That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 30 

'^ Ah, sad and strange as in dark snmmer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 

''■ Dear as remember\l kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign\l 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love. 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
Death in Life, the days that are no more.'^ 40 

She ended with such passion that the tear, 
She sang of, shook and fell, an erring pearl 
Lost in her bosom : but with some disdain 
Answered the Princess, '' If indeed there haunt 
About the mouldered lodges of the Past 
So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men. 
Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool 
And so pace by : but thine are fancies hatched 
In silken-folded idleness ; nor is it 

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, 50 

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be. 
While down the streams that float us each and all 
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, 
Throne after throne, and molten on the waste 
Becomes a cloud : for all things serve their time 

34. Casement, window. 

47. Cram our ears ivith ivool. Ulysses stopped the ears of his com- 
panions with wax as they passed by the island of the Sirens, so that 
they shouki not hear the singing, by which the metaphor of the. 
"sweet, vague, and fatal voice" is suggested. 

54. Throne after throne. The European revolutions of this cen- 
tury here suggest the thought. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 53 

Toward that great year of equal mights and rights ; 

Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 

Found golden : let the past be past ; let be 

Their cancelFd Babels : tho^ the rough kex break 

The starr'd mosaic, and the beard-blown goat 60 

Hang on the shaft, and the wild figtree split 

Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear 

A trumpet in the distance pealing news 

Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 

Above the unrisen morrow : '' then to me ; 

" Know you no song of your own land,'^ she said, 

'^'Not such as moans about the retrospect. 

But deals with the other distance and the hues 

Of promise ; not a death^'s-head at the wine." 

Then I remembered one myself had made, 70 

What time I watcliM the swallow winging south 
From mine own land, part made long since, and part 
Now while I sang, and maidenlike, as far 
As I could ape their treble, did I sing. 

56. Oreat year. A poetical phrase equivalent to age ; here the 
age of democracy. 

58. Golden, the best in their results. 

59. CancelVd Babels, completely destroyed Babylons; here used 
metaphorically of all the dead past. 

Kex, hemlock ; let the rough growth of the ruin break through 
the starry mosaic pavement, and the goat, with his beard blowing in 
the wind, hang on the pillar (as on a crag), and the wild fig-tree split 
the monstrous idols of the shrine (just as the pine splits the rock in 
whose crevices it has sprung up). These picturesque details of the 
ruin of a temple are the characteristic ones noticed by travellers, 
and are familiar in literature, both ancient and modern. 
64. Burns, reflects the light from the sun rising, but not yet seen. 

68. Other distance, the future. 

69. Death'' s-head at the ivine. The metaphor, common in poetry, 
is originally derived from the story of Herodotus, that the Egyp- 
tians, at their banquets, had a wooden image of a mummy brought 
in and carried about as a reminder of death. 

71. Cf. III., 194. 



64 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

'^ Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, 
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves. 
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. 

" tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each. 
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 
And dark and true and tender is the North. 80 

'^ Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill. 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 

^' were I thou that she might take me in, 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. 

"Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love. 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green ? 

" tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown : 90 

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

'^ tell her, brief is life, but love is long, 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 

^^0 Swallow, flying from the golden woods. 
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, 
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee."" 

I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each, 
Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, 100 

Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips, 

100. Ithacensian suitors, in Homer's Odyssey, the suitors for 
the hand of Penelope, wife of Ulysses, whom that hero slew on his 
return to Ithaca at the end of his voyage. 

101. With alien lips, strangely, without knowing why. The 
phrase is meant as a translation of the Greek, literally " with other 
men's jaws." Homer, Odyssey, xx., 347. 



IV.] A 3IEDLEY 65 

And knew not what they meant ; for still my voice 

Rang false : but smiling '' Not for thee/^ she said, 

" Biilbul, any rose of Gnlistan t-> a . -' 

Shall burst her veil : marsh-divers, rather, maid, 

Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake 

Grate her harsh kindred in the grass : and this 

A mere love-poem ! for such, my friend. 

We hold them slight : they mind us of the time 

When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, 110 

That lute and flute fantastic tenderness. 

And dress the victim to the offering up. 

And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 

And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 

Poor soul ! I had a maid of honour once ; 

She wept her true eyes blind, for such a one, 

A rogue of canzonets and serenades. 

I loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. 

So they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song 

Used to great ends : ourself have often tried 120 

Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dashed. 

The passion of the prophetess ; for song 

104. Bulhul, nightingale. 

OuUstan, rose-garden. Both words are Persian, tiie love of the 
rose and the nightingale being a leading motive in Persian poetry. 

105. Marsh-divers . . . meadow -crake, birds of harsh notes. 
110. When we made bricks in Egypt, when we lived in bondage to 

men before the exodus to this retreat. The phrase is a general one 
for thraldom, and alludes to the work required by Pharaoh of the 
Israelites in Egypt. Exodus i. 8-14 ; v. 7. 

112. Dress -the victim. The animal to be sacrificed was often 
dressed in garlands before being led to the altar. 

117. Canzonets, a kind of light song, used especially in Southern 
nations, and, like the " serenades," sung to a guitar, or similar in- 
strument, by lovers, 

121. Valhjrian. The Valkyrs are Odin's handmaidens, who are 
sent to the battle-field to choose those who shall be slain, and they 
conduct their souls to Valhalla, the heaven of the race, and there 
serve at the banquets. 

122. Such as Miriam's in the Scriptures. Exodus xv. 20. 



66 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

Is duer unto freedom, force and growth 

Of spirit than to junketing and love. 

Love is it ? Would this same mock-love, and this 

Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats. 

Till all men grew to rate us at our worth, 

Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes 

To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered 

Whole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough ! 130 

Bat now to leaven play with profit, you. 

Know you no song, the true growth of your soil. 

That gives the manners of your country-women ? '' 

She spoke and turned her sumptuous head with eyes 
Of shining expectation fixt on mine. 
Then while I dragg'd my brains for such a song, 
Cyril, with whom the bell-moutliM glass had wrought. 
Or mastered by the sense of sport, began 
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch 
Of Moll and ]\Ieg, and strange experiences 140 

Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, 
I frowning ; Psyche flusliM and wann'd and shook ; 
The lilylike Melissa droopM her brows ; 
'^ Forbear," the Princess cried ; '' Forbear, Sir " I ; 
And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, 
I smote him on the breast ; he started up ; 
There rose a shriek as of a city sacked ; 
Melissa clamour'd " Flee the death ; '' ''To horse" 
Said Ida ; '' home ! to horse ! " and fled, as flies 
A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, 150 

When some one batters at the dovecote-doors. 
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood 
With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, 

126. Mock-Hijmen. Hymen was the god of marriage. 
130. Oived, rightfully bound. 

137. With whom the lell-moutN d glass had wrought, on whom the 
wine had worked. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 67 

In the pavilion : there like parting hopes 

I heard them passing from me : hoof by hoof. 

And every hoof a knell to my desires, 

Clang'd on the bridge ; and then another shriek, 

'' The Head, the Head, the Princess, the Head \" 

For blind with rage she missed the plank, and rolled 

In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom : 160 

There whirl'd her white robe like a blossomed feranch 

Rapt to the horrible fall : a glance I gave. 

No more ; but woman-vested as I was 

Plunged ; and the flood drew ; yet I caught her ; then 

Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left 

The weight of all the hopes of half the world. 

Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree 

Was half-disrooted from his place and stoop'd 

To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave 

Mid-channel. Eight on this we drove and caught, 170 

And grasping down the boughs I gain'd the shore. 

There stood her maidens glimmeringly groupM 
In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew 
My burthen from mine arms ; they cried ^' she lives : '' 
They bore her back into the tent : but I, 
So much a kind of shame within me wrought, 
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes. 
Nor found my friends ; but push'd alone on foot 
(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) 
Across the woods, and less from Indian craft 180 

Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length 
The garden portals. Two great statues. Art 

154. Parting, departing. 

160. Olow to gloom, from the light inside the tent to the darkness 
without. 

163. Rapt, hurried away. 
166. Half the ivorld, woman. 
180. Indian craft, wood-craft. 



68 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

And Science, Caryatids, lifted up 
A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves 
Of open-work in which the hunter rued 
His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows 
Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon 
Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates. 

A little €pace was left between the horns, 
Thro^ which I clamber\l o^'er at top with pain, 190 

Dropt on the sward, and up the linden walks. 
And, tost on thoughts that changed from hue to hue. 
Now poring on the glowworm, now the star, 
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheeFd 
Thro^ a great arc his seven slow suns. 

A step 
Of lightest echo, then a loftier form 
Than female, moving thro^ the uncertain gloom. 
Disturb^ me with the doubt ^' if this were she,^^ 
But it was Florian. " Hist Hist,^" he said, 
'' They seek us : out so late is out of rules. 200 

Moreover ' seize the strangers ' is the cry. 
How came you here VI told him : '^1/' said he, 
*' Last of the train, a moral leper, I, 
To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, return^. 
Arriving all confused among the rest 

183. Caryatids, figures of women used as columns for architectural 
support. 

184. Weight of emblem, an entablature wrought with emblems; 
but the student will have noticed that all the decorations of the 
palace are emblematic. 

Valves, gates. 

185. The hunter, Actaeon, who was changed into a stag by Diana, 
because of his intrusion upon her. He is here represented in the 
openwork of the gates, with the form and face of a man, but the 
antlers have sprouted on his brows and, branching above, make 
the spikes of the gate. 

193. Now looking on the ground, now at heaven. 

194. Bear, the northern constellation of the Great Bear. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 69 

With hooded brows I crept into the hall. 

And, couchM behind a Judith, underneath 

The head of Holofernes peepM and saw. 

Girl after girl was calFd to trial : each 

Disclaimed all knowledge of us : last of all, 210 

Melissa : trust me. Sir, I pitied her. 

She, questioned if she kncAv us men, at first 

Was silent ; closer prest, denied it not : 

And then, demanded if her mother knew. 

Or Psyche, she affirmM not, or denied : 

From whence the Eoyal mind, familiar with her, 

Easily gathered either guilt. She sent 

For Psyche, but she was not there ; she called 

For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors ; 

She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face ; 220 

And 1 slipt out : but whither will you now ? 

And where are Psyche, Cyril ? both are fled : 

What, if together ? that were not so well. 

Would rather we had never come ! I dread 

His wildness, and the chances of the dark."' 

'^ And jet/' I said, ^^you wrong him more than I 
That struck him : this is proper to the clown, 
Tho' smocked, or furr'd and purpled, still the clown. 
To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame 

207. Judith, the Jewess who entered the camp of Holofernes, then 
besieging her native city, and, gaining admission to his tent under 
pretext, killed him as he lay asleep after the feast and cut off his 
head. The story is told in the Book of Judith in the Apocrypha. 

214. Demanded, asked. 

217. Either guilt, the guilt of both Lady Blanche and Lady 
Psyche. 

219. Notice the attitude of the Princess toward the child, which 
changes from this point. 

227. Proper to, appropriate to, the nature of. 

228. Smock'd, or furr'd and purpled, whether dressed in the com- 
mon, plebeian smock or in the furs and purple that belong to high 
rank. 



70 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

That wliicli he says he loves : for Cyril, however 230 

He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song 

Might have been worse and sinn'd in grosser lips 

Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold 

These flashes on the surface are not he. 

He has a solid base of temperament : 

But as the waterlily starts and slides 

Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 

Tho' anchored to the bottom, such is he." 

Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near 
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, ^^ Names : " 240 

He, standing still, was clutch^ ; but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 
And double in and out the boles, and race 
By all the fountains : fleet I was of foot : 
Before me sliowerM the rose in flakes ; behind 
I heard the puff'd pursuer ; at mine ear 
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not. 
And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 
At last I hookM my ankle in a vine. 

That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, 250 

And falling on my face was caught and known. 

They haled us to the Princess where she sat 
High in the hall: above her droop^l a lamp. 
And made the single jewel on her brow 
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast head. 
Prophet of storm: a handmaid on each side 

242. Thrid, thread. 

Musky-circled, hung with heavy fragrance. 

243. Boles, tree-trunks. 

250. Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, mother of the Muses. 

252. Haled, hauled. 

255. Mystic fire, St. Elmo's fire, called corposant by sailors, is an 
electrical ball of light that sometimes plays about the masts and 
rigging of a ship in or before stormy weather. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 71 

Bow^d toward her, combing out her long black hair 
Damp from the river ; and close behind her stood 
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, 
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, 
And labour. Each was like a Druid rock ; 361 

Or like a spire of land that stands apart 
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews. 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove 
An advent to the throne : and therebeside. 
Half-naked as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child ; and on the left, 
Bow'd on her palms and folded up from wrong, 
Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 270 

Melissa knelt ; but Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. 

'^^It was not thus, Princess, in old days : 
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips : 
I led you then to all the Castalies ; 
I fed you with the milk of every Muse ; 
I loved you like this kneeler, and you me 
Your second mother : those were gracious times. 
Then came your new friend : you began to change — 
I saw it and grieved — to slacken and to cool ; 280 

Till taken with her seeming openness 
You turned your warmer currents all to her, 

260. Blowzed, with a coarse red complexion. 

261. Druid roch, a great stone set in the ground, like those at 
Stonehenge on Salisbury plain, by the Druids, who were the priests 
of the Celts. 

263. WaiVd about with meivs, surrounded by crying sea-mews, gulls. 

265. Advent, passage. 

275. Castalies. Castalia was the fountain on Mount Parnassus, 
sacred to the Muses, and inspiring those who drank of it : here, all 
the founts of poetry. 



72 THE PRtNGESS [IV. 

To me you froze : this was my meed for all. 

Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, 

And partly that I hoped to win you back, 

And partly conscious of my own deserts. 

And partly that you were my civil head, 

And chiefly you were born for something great. 

In which I might your fellow-worker be. 

When time should serve ; and thus a noble scheme 290 

Grew up from seed we two long since had sown ; 

In us true growth, in her a Jonah^s gourd. 

Up in one night and due to sudden sun : 

We took this palace ; but even from the first 

You stood in your own light and darkened mine. 

AVhat student came but that you planed her path 

To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, 

A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, 

I your old friend and tried, she new in all ? 

But still her lists were swelFd and mine were lean ; 300 

Yet I bore up in hope she would be known : 

Then came these wolves : they knew her : they endured. 

Long-closeted with her the yestermorn. 

To tell her what they were, and she to hear : 

And me none told : not less to an eye like mine 

A lidless watcher of the public weal. 

Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot 

Was to you : but I thought again : I fear'd 

To meet a cold ' We thank you, we shall hear of it 

From Lady Pysche : ' you had gone to her, 310 

She told, perforce ; and winning easy grace. 

No doubt, for slight delay, remain^'d among us 

Li our young nursery still unknown, the stem 

292. Jonah's gourd, the gourd of the prophet Jonah, that grew up 
in a night. Jonah iv. 5-11. 
296. Pla7ied, smoothed. 

306. Lidless, with unclosing eyes. 

307. Patent, open. 

313. Nursery, a place where young trees are grown. 



IV.] A MEDLEY . 73 

Less grain than touchwood^ while my honest heat 

Were all miscounted as malignant haste 

To push my rival out of place and power. 

But public use required she should be known ; 

And since my oath was ta'en for ]3ublic use, 

I broke the letter of it to keep the sense. 

I spoke not then at first, but watched them well, 320 

Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; 

And yet this day (tho^ you should hate me for it) 

I came to tell you ; found that you had gone, 

Ridd''n to the hills, she likewise : now, I thought. 

That surely she will speak ; if not, then I : 

Did she ? These monsters blazoned what they were. 

According to the coarseness of their kind. 

For thus I hear ; and known at last (my work) 

And full of cowardice and guilty shame, 

I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies ; 330 

And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, 

I, that have lent my life to build up yours, 

I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time. 

And talent, I — you know it — I will not boast : 

Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan. 

Divorced from my experience, will be chaff 

For every gust of chance, and men Avill say 

We did not know the real light, but chased 

The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread. ^' 

She ceased: the Princess answered coldly, ^^Good: 340 
Your oath is broken : we dismiss you : go. 

314. Grain than touchwood, firm and hard than soft and infl-am- 
mable : touchwood is the name of wood which has suffered a par- 
ticular kind of decay that makes it like tinder. 
Honest heat., heat of sound wood. 

826. Blazon'd, proclaimed, made coarsely apparent. 

328. Knoivn at last {my tvork), made known by my crafty delay, 
which gave her free rein. 

389. Wisp, will-o'-the-wisp, seen in marshes and low lands. 



74 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) 
Our mind is changed : we take it to ourself/^ 

Thereat the Lady stretcliM a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 
^' The plan was mine. I built the nest "' she said 
^' To hatch the cuckoo. Rise ! " and stoopVl to updrag 
Melissa : she, half on her mother propt, 
Half -drooping from her, turned her face, and cast 
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 350 

Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, 
A Niobean daughter, one arm out. 
Appealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while 
We gazed upon her came a little stir 
About the doors, and on a sudden rush'd 
Among us, out of breath, as one pursued, 
A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear 
Stared in her eyes, and chalk\I her face, and wingM 
Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell 
Delivering seaFd dispatches which the Head 3G0 

Took half-amazed, and in her lion^s mood 
Tore open, silent we with blind surmise 
Regarding, while she read, till over brow 
And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom 
As of some fire against a stormy cloud. 
When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick 

344, 345. These two lines are the height of the gesture-description 
of Lady Blanche, already noted. Perhaps, the best of such lines by 
Tennyson are the well-known 

" Read rascal in the motions of his back, 
And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee." 

347. Cuckoo. The cuckoo lays its eggs in other birds' nests. 

353. Nio'bea7i daughter, like one of the famous Niobe group, in 
which the mother is represented in the midst of her daughters as 
they are being slain by the arrows of Apollo and Diana, in revenge 
for her boast that she had borne more children than Leda, the 
mother of those deities. 

357. Woman-post, messenger. 

366. This line is suggested by the disturbances in England " more 



IV.] A MEDLEY 75 

Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; 

For anger most it seem'd, while now her breast, 

Beaten with some great passion at her heart, 

Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard 370 

In the dead hush the papers that she held 

Eustle : at once the lost lamb at her feet 

Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam ; 

The plaintive cry jarr'd on her ire ; she crush'd 

The scrolls together, made a sudden turn 

As if to speak, but, utterance failing her. 

She whirFd them on to me, as who should say 

^' Read,'' and I read — two letters — one her sire's. 

^' Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way 
We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, 380 
We, conscious of what temper you are built. 
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell 
Into his father's hands, who has this night. 
You lying close upon his territory, 
Slipt round and in the dark invested you. 
And here he keeps me hostage for his son." 

The second was my father's running thus : 
*' You have our son: touch not a hair of his head : 
Render him up unscathed : give him your hand : 
Cleave to your contract : tho' indeed we hear 390 

You hold the woman is the better man ; 
A rampant heresy, such as if it spread 
Would make all women kick against their Lords 
Thro' all the world, and which might well deserve 

than hall a hundred years ago, in rick-fire days," when the peasants 
burned the hayricks, and Tennyson himself took a part {cf. To Mary 
Boyle, vii,-xi.) : 

" And once— I well remember that red night 
When thirty ricks, 

All flaming, made an English homestead Hell— 

These hands of mine 
Have helped to pass a bucket from the well 

Along the line." 



76 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

That we this night should pluck your palace down ; 
And we will do it, unless you send us back 
Our son, on the instant, whole/^ 

So far I read ; 
And then stood up and spoke impetuously. 

'' not to pry and peer on your reserve. 
But led by golden wishes, and a hope 400 

The child of regal comjoact, did I break 
Your precinct ; not a scorner of your sex. 
But venerator, zealous it should be 
All that it might be : hear me, for I bear, 
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs. 
From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life 
Less mine than yours : my nurse would tell me of you ; 
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon, 
Vague brightness ; when a boy, you stoop'd to me 
From all high places, lived in all fair lights, 410 

Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south 
And blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn 
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ; 
The leader wildswan in among the stars 
Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light 
The mellow breaker murmured Ida. Now, 
Because I would have reach'd you, had you been 
Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned 
Persephone in Hades, now at length, 

401, 402. Break Your precinct, trespass on your bounds. 
406. From boyhood to old age. 

415. Clang, the sound of the swan's wing ; but Wallace refers it to 
the song-note of the swan. 

Glowworm light, phosphorescence. 

418. Cassiopeia, the Ethiopian queen, mother of Andromeda, who, 
after death, was placed in heaven as the constellation of that name. 

419. PersepJione, the daughter of Ceres, stolen by Pluto, god of 
the infernal world, as she was gathering flowers in Sicily, and carried 
by him underground, where she became his queen in Hades. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 77 

Those winters of abeyance all worn out^ 420 

A man I came to see you : but, indeed, 

Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, 

noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait 
On you, their centre : let me say but this. 
That many a famous man and woman, town 
And landskip, have I heard of, after seen 

The dwarfs of presage : tho"* when known, there grew 

Another kind of beauty in detail 

Made them worth knowing ; but in you I found 

My boyish dream involved and dazzled down 430 

And mastered, while that after-beauty makes 

Such head from act to act, from hour to hour. 

Within me, that except you slay me here. 

According to your bitter statute-book, 

1 cannot cease to follow you, as they say 
The seal does music ; who desire you more 
Than growing boys their manhood ; dying lips. 
With many thousand matters left to do. 

The breath of life ; more than poor men wealth. 

Than sick men health — yours, yours, not mine — but half 

Without you ; with you, whole ; and of those halves 441 

You worthiest ; and however you block and bar 

Your heart with system out from mine, I hold 

That it becomes no man to nurse despair. 

But in the teeth of clenchM antagonisms 

To follow up the worthiest till he die : 

Yet that I came not all unauthorized 

Behold your father^'s letter/' 

420. Wmters of abeyance, the years during which the " pre-con- 
tract" lay in abeyance ; existed, but was not acted on. 
422. Frequence, throng. 

426. Landskip, landscape. 

427. Dwarfs of presage. They turned out, when seen, to be less 
than was promised or expected, 

431. After-beauty, beauty following a fuller knowledge, as above. 
436. The seal does music. The fact is stated by many naturalists ; 
see the Encyclopcedia Britannica under Seal. 



78 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

On one knee 
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dash'd 
Unopened at her feet : a tide of fierce 450 

Invective seemVl to wait behind her lips, 
As waits a river level with the dam 
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam : 
And so she would have spoken, but there rose 
A hubbub in the court of half the maids 
Gathered together : from the illumined hall 
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press 
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes. 
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes. 
And gold and golden heads ; they to and fro 460 

Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale. 
All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light. 
Some crying there was an army in the land. 
And some that men were in the very walls, 
And some they cared not ; till a clamour grew 
As of a new- world Babel, woman-built. 
And worse-confounded : high above them stood 
The placid marble Muses, looking peace. 

Not peace she look'd, the Head : but rising up 
Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 470 

To the open window moved, remaining there 
Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves 
Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye 
Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 
Dash themselves dead. She stretch'd her arms and call'd 
Across the tumult, and the tumult fell. 

455. Court, the outer courtyard lit up by the light through the 
hall windows. 

466. Babel, the tower built to heaven, during the construction of 
which the tongues of men were confounded, so that no one under- 
stood his neighbor. Genesis xi. 1-9. 

473. Crimson-rolling eye, the red, revolving light of the beacon. 

474. Birds, the sea-birds sometimes fly against the sides of the 
light and are killed. 



IV.] A MEDLEY 79 

" What fear ye, brawlers ? am not I your Head ? 
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks : / dare 
All these male thunderbolts : what is it ye fear ? 
Peace ! there are those to avenge us and they come : 480 
If not, — myself were like enough, girls. 
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, — 

And clad in iron burst the ranks of war. 
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause. 
Die : yet I blame you not so much for fear ; 
Six thousand years of fear have made you that 
From which I would redeem you : but for those 
That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know 
Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn 
A¥e hold a great convention : then shall they 490 

That love their voices more than duty, learn 
With whom they deal, dismissed in shame to live 
No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, 
Live chattels, mincers of each other^s fame. 
Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, 
The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, 
Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, 
But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum. 
To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. 
For ever slaves at home and fools abroad." 500 

She, ending, waved her hands : thereat the crowd. 
Muttering, dissolved : then with a smile that looked 
A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff. 
When all the glens are drowned in azure gloom 
Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said : 

480, Those, her brothers. 

484. Protomartyr, first martyr, the name given to St. Stephen. 

494. Chattels, articles of personal property ; Wallace quotes the 
Slavonian definition of woman as " a living broom or shovel." 

495. Tiirnspits, cooks, servants set to turn the spit, or pointed rod, 
on which it was the custom to fix meat to be roasted by turning it 
from side to side before the open fire. 



80 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

" You have done well and like a gentleman. 
And like a prince : you have our thanks for all : 
And you look well too in your woman^s dress : 
Well have you done and like a gentleman. 
You saved our life : we owe you bitter thanks : 510 

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — 
Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 
To take such bloody vengeance on you both ? — 
Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive. 
You would-be quenchers of the light to be. 
Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 

would I had his sceptre for one hour ! 

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd 
Our servants, wrong'd and lied and thwarted us — 
/wed with thee ! /bound by precontract 520 

Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho^ all the gold 
That veins the world were pack\i to make your crown. 
And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us : 

1 trample on your offers and on you : 
Begone : we will not look upon you more. 
Here, push them out at gates." 

In wrath she spake. 
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough 
Bent their broad faces toward us and addressed 
Their motion : twice I sought to plead my cause, 530 
But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands. 
The weight of destiny : so from her face 
They push'd us, down the steps, and thro' the court. 
And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. 

We crossed the street and gainM a petty mound 
Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard 
The voices murmuring. While I listenM, came 
On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt : 

523. In every language you shoukl be called lord. 
529. Addressed, turned 



IV.] A 3IEDLEY 81 

I seemM to move among a world of ghosts ; 

The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, 540 

The jest and earnest working side by side. 

The cataract and the tumult and the kings 

Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night 

With all its doings had and had not been, 

And all things were and were not. 

This went by 
As strangely as it came, and on my spirits 
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy ; 
Not long ; I shook it off ; for spite of doubts 
And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one 
To whom the touch of all mischance but came 550 

As night to him that sitting on a hill 
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise ; then we moved away. 



Thy voice is heard thro* rolling drums. 
That beat to battle where he stands ; 

Thy face across his fancy comes. 
And gives the battle to his hands : 



A moment, while the trumpets blow. 

He sees his brood about thy knee ; 
The next, like fire he meets the foe, 560 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 



552. Norway sun. The midsummer sun in Norway, within the 
Arctic circle, does not set, but is still visible at midnight. The 
Prince means that the light of his love was thus constant with him, 
and despair passed at once into hope again. 



82 THE PRINCESS [IV. 

So Lilia sang : we thought her half-possess'd. 

She struck such warbling fury thro' the words ; 

And, after, feigning pique at what she calFd 

The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime — 

Like one that wishes at a dance to change 

The music — clapt her hands and cried for war, 

Or some grand fight to kill and make an end : 

And he that next inherited the tale 

Half turning to the broken statue, said, 570 

'' Sir Ealph has got your colours : if I prove 

Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me ? '' 

It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb 

Lay by her like a model of her hand. 

She took it and she flung it. " Fight,'' she said, 

^' And make us all we would be, great and good." 

He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, 

A cap of Tyrol borrowed from the hall. 

Arranged the favour, and assumed the Prince. 



v.] A MEDLEY 83 



Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound. 
We stumbled on a stationary voice, 
And '' Stand, who goes V "^'Two from the palace " I. 
'' The second two : they wait," he said, '^^pass on ; 
His Highness wakes : " and one, that clash'd in arms. 
By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led 
Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 
The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake 
From blazoned lions o^er the imperial tent 
Whispers of war. 

Entering, the sudden light 10 

Dazed me half-blind : I stood and seemM to hear. 
As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes 
A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies. 
Each hissing in his neighbour's ear ; and then 
A strangled titter, out of which there brake 
On all sides, clamouring etiquette to death. 
Unmeasured mirth ; while now the two old kings 
Began to wag their baldness up and down. 
The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth. 
The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew, 20 

And slain with laughter rolFd the gilded Squire. 

At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears. 
Panted from weary sides ^^King, you are free ! 

1. The fifth speaker here begins. 

2. Stationary voice, sentinel. 

4. The first two were Cyril and Psyche. 

5. His Highness, the King. 

9. Blazon'd lions, lions emblazoned, or pictured, on the ensign. 

13. Innumerous, innumerable. 

14. Hissing, whispering. 

21. Squire, in the feudal sense of an attendant youth, not yet a 
knight. 



84 THE PRINCESS [V. 

We did but keep you surety for our son, 

If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou, 

That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge : " 

For I was drenched with ooze, and torn with briers. 

More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath. 

And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel. 

Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm 30 

A whisper'd jest to some one near him, " Look, 

He has been among his shadows/^ ^' Satan take 

The old women and their shadows ! (thus the King 

KoarM) make yourself a man to fight with men. 

Go : Cyril told us all.'' 

As boys that slink 
From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye. 
Away we stole, and transient in a trice 
From what was left of faded woman-slough 
To sheathing splendours and the golden scale 
Of harness, issued in the sun, that now 40 

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, 
And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us. 
A little shy at first, but by and by 
We twain, with mutual pardon ask'd and given 
For stroke and song, resolder'd peace, whereon 
Followed his tale. Amazed, he fled away 
Thro' the dark land, and later in the night 
Had come on Psyche weeping : '' then we fell 
Into your father's hand, and there she lies. 
But will not speak, nor stir." 

He show'd a tent 50 

A stone-shot off : we enter'd in, and there 

25. Mmvkin (malkin), kitchen-woman. 

26. Sludge, mire. 

28. From the sheath, just blossomed. 

37. Transient, passing. 

38. Woyrum-slough, woman garments. 

40. Harness, armor, here made of overlapping small plates of gold, 
like a fish's scales. 



v.] A MEDLEY 85 

Among piled arms and rough accoutrements, 

Pitiful sight, wrapped in a soldier's cloak, 

Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot. 

And pushed by rude hands from its pedestal, 

All her fair length upon the ground she lay : 

And at her head a follower of the camp, 

A charr'd and wrinkled piece of womanhood. 

Sat watching like a watcher by the dead. 

Then Florian knelt, and '' Come,''' he whispered to 
her, 60 

'^ Lift up your head, sweet sister : lie not thus. 
What have you done but right ? you could not slay 
Me, nor your prince : look up : be comforted : 
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought. 
When fall'n in darker ways.'' And likewise I : 
" Be comforted : have I not lost her too. 
In whose least act abides the nameless charm 
That none has else for me ? " She heard, she moved, 
She moan'd, a folded voice ; and up she sat. 
And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth 70 
As those that mourn half-shrouded over death 
In deathless marble. '^ Her," she said, " my friend — 
Parted from her — betray'd her cause and mine — 
Where shall I breathe ? why kept ye not your faith ? 
base and bad ! what comfort ? none for me ! " 
To whom remorseful Cyril, '^ Yet I pray 
Take comfort : live, dear lady, for your child ! " 
At which she lifted up her voice and cried. 

" Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child. 
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more ! 80 

70. Rolfe refers the allusion specifically to Michael Angelo's Pieta 
at St. Peter s, but the text does not justify so exact an interpretation. 

79. This highly wrought speech, in the manner of Tennyson's 
shorter idyls, stands out in poetic relief as the songs and idyl in VII. 



86 THE PRINCESS [V. 

For now will cruel Ida keep her back ; 

And either she will die from want of care. 

Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say 

The child is hers — for every little fault. 

The child is hers ; and they will beat my girl 

Kemembering her mother : my flower ! 

Or they will take her, they will make her hard. 

And she will pass me by in after-life 

With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. 

Ill mother that I was to leave her there, 90 

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made. 

The horror of the shame among them all : 

But I will go and sit beside the doors, 

And make a wild petition night and day, 

Until they hate to hear me like a wind 

Wailing for ever, till they open to me. 

And lay my little blossom at my feet. 

My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child : 

And I will take her up and go my way. 

And satisfy my soul with kissing her : 100 

Ah ! what might that man not deserve of me 

Who gave me back my child ?" '' Be comforted/^ 

Said Cyril, '^you shall have it : " but again 

She veilM her brows, and prone she sank, and so 

Like tender things that being caught feign death. 

Spoke not, nor stirrM. 

By this a murmur ran 
Thro^ all the camp and inward raced the scouts 
With rumour of Prince Arac hard at hand. 
We left her by the woman, and without 
Found the gray kings at parle: and " Look you,^' cried 110 
My father, '^ that our compact be fulfilled : 
You have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man : 

89. Reverence, formal curtsey. 

90. Ill, bad. 

110. Parle, parley, formal conference. 



v.] A MEDLEY 87 

She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him : 
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire ; 
She yields, or war." 

Then Gama turn'd to me : 
'^ We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl : and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large : 
How say you, war or not ? " 

'*Not war, if possible, 

king," I said, '' lest from the abuse of war, 120 
The desecrated shrine, the trampled year. 

The smouldering liomestead, and the household flower 

Torn from the lintel — all the common wrong — 

A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her 

Three times a monster : now she lightens scorn 

At him that mars her plan, but then would hate 

(And every voice she talk'd with ratify it. 

And every face she lookM on justify it) 

The general foe. More soluble is this knot. 

By gentleness than war. I want her love. 130 

What were I nigher this altho' we dashed 

Your cities into shards with catapults. 

She would not love ; — or brought her chain'd, a slave. 

The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, 

Not ever would she love ; but brooding turn 

The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance 

Were caught within the record of her wrongs. 

And crushed to death : and rather. Sire, than this 

1 would the old God of war himself were dead, 
Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, 140 
Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, 

121. Year, harvest. 

132. Shards, fragments, used of hard, earthen substances. 

Catapults, engines for bombardment. 
136. Flitting chance, passing chance, with a suggested meaning of 
slight hope. 



88 TEE PRINCESS [V. 

Or like an old-world mammotli bulk'd in ice, 
Not to be molten out/^ 

And roughly spake 
My father^ " Tut, you know them not, the girls. 
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think 
That idiot legend credible. Look you. Sir ! 
Man is the hunter ; woman is his game : 
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase. 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; 
They love us for it, and we ride them down. 150 

Wheedling and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! 
Boy, there^'s no rose that's half so dear to them 
As he that does the thing they dare not do. 
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes 
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 
Among the women, snares them by the score 
Flattered and flustered, wins, tho' dash'd with death 
He reddens what he kisses : thus I won 
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife. 
Worth winning ; but this firebrand — gentleness 160 

To such as her ! if Cyril spake her true. 
To catch a dragon in a cherry net. 
To trip a tigress with a gossamer. 
Were wisdom to it/' 

" Yea but Sire," I cried, 
" Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier ? No : 
What dares not Ida do that she should j^rize 
The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes, 

142, Mammoth, the prehistoric monstrous animal sometimes found 
entire (in his whole bulk) in Arctic ice. 

146. Idiot legend, of the old sorcerer {cf. I. , 5). 

157. DasWd with death, red from the fight ; here with a reference 
to the " rose " above. 

162. Cherry net, a net placed over cherry trees to protect the fruit 
from birds. 

166. Cf. 153, above. 

168. In extremes, violently. 



v.] A 3IEDLEY 89 

Stood for her cause^ and flung defiance down 

Gagelike to man, and had not shunn'd the death, 170 

No, not the soldiers : yet I hold her, King, 

True woman : but you clash them all in one. 

That have as many differences as we. 

The violet varies from the lily as far 

As oak from elm : one loves the soldier, one 

The silken priest of peace, one this, one that. 

And some unworthily ; their sinless faith, 

A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty. 

Glorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need 

More breadth of culture : is not Ida right ? 180 

They worth it ? truer to the law within ? 

Severer in the logic of a life ? 

Twice as magnetic to sweet influences 

Of earth and heaven ? and she of whom you speak. 

My mother, looks as whole as some serene 

Creation minted in the golden moods 

Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch. 

But pure as lines of green that streak the white 

Of the first snowdrop^'s inner leaves ; I say, 

Not like the piebald miscellany, man, 190 

Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire. 

But whole and one : and take them all-in-all, 

Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind, 

As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 

Had ne^er been mooted, but as frankly theirs 

As dues of Nature. To our point : not war : 

Lest I lose all/^ 

170. Gagelike, as the knight flung his glove, or gage of battle, 
before his enemy as a sign of challenge to combat. 

179. Satyr, a mythological being, half human and half goatish by 
nature ; here used as a metaphor for the animal, as cloivn is for the 
vulgar, in man. 

183. llagnetic, turning toward and becoming charged with. 

186. Creation, ideal picture. 

190. Piebald, spotted with different colors, like some horses. 

195. Mooted, put in question. 



90 THE PRINCESS [V. 

'' Nay, nay, you spake but sense/^ 
Said Grama. ^'We remember love ourself 
In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then 
This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. 200 

You talk almost like Ida : she can talk ; 
And there is something in it as you say : 
But you talk kindlier : we esteem you for it. — 
He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, 
I would he had our daughter : for the rest, 
Our own detention, why, the causes weighed. 
Fatherly fears — you used ns courteously — 
We would do much to gratify your Prince — 
We pardon it ; and for your ingress here 
Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, 210 

You did but come as goblins in the night, 
Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head, 
Nor burnt the grange, nor buss'd the milking-maid. 
Nor robVd the farmer of his bowl of cream : 
But let your Prince (our royal word npon it. 
He comes back safe) ride with ns to our lines. 
And speak with Arac : Arac's word is thrice 
As ours with Ida : something may be done — 
I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. 
You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, 220 

Follow ns : who knows ? we four may build some 

plan 
Foursquare to opposition.'" 

Here he reached 
White hands of farewell to my sire, who growl'd 
An answer which, half-muffled in his beard. 
Let so much out as gave us leave to go. 

204. Oama here turns and addresses the King. 
211. Goblins, elves that visit the household, sometimes mischiev- 
ous, but not of bad nature, as in Milton's L' Allegro, 105. 
213, Buss'd, kissed. 
220. You, Florian and Cyril. 
222. Foursquare, a metaphor for impregnable. 



v.] A MEDLEY 91 

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns 
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring 
In every bole, a song on every spray 
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke 
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love 230 

In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed 
All o'er with honey'd answer as we rode 
And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews 
Gathered by night and peace, with each light air 
On our mail'd heads : but other thoughts than Peace 
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares. 
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers 
With clamour : for among them rose a cry 
As if to greet the king ; they made a halt ; 
The horses yelFd ; they clash'd their arms ; the drum 240 
Beat ; merrily-blowing shrill'd the martial fife ; 
And in the blast and bray of the long horn 
And serpent-throated bugle, undulated 
The banner : anon to meet us lightly pranced 
Three captains out ; nor ever had I seen 
Such thews of men : the midmost and the highest 
Was Arac : all about his motion clung 
The shadow of his sister, as the beam 
Of the East, that play'd upon them, made them glance 
Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, 250 

That glitter burnish'd by the frosty dark ; 
And as the fiery Sirius alters hue, 

227. Trees a thousand years old, the growth of each year making 
one ring in the trunk. 

229. Vale7itines, love-messages. 

233. Slipt ; i.e., from the boughs. 

246. Thews, muscles and sinews ; here used for the athletes them- 
selves. 

248. Arac resembled his sister, and reminded the Prince of her figure. 

250. Airy Gianfs zone, the belt of Orion, the giant hunter, who 
was set in the heavens as the constellation of that name. 

251. Frosty. Orion is a winter constellation in England. 

252. Sirius, the dog-star. 



92 THE PRINCESS [V. 

And bickers into red and emerald^ shone 

Their morions, washed with morning, as they came. 

And 1 that prated peace, when first I heard 
War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force. 
Whose home is in the sinews of a man. 
Stir in me as to strike : then took the king 
His three broad sons ; with now a wandering hand 
And now a pointed finger, told them all : 260 

A common light of smiles at our disguise 
Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest 
Had laboured down within his ample lungs. 
The genial giant, Arac, roll'd himself 
Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words. 

^' Our land invaded, ^sdeath ! and he himself 
Your ca2otive, yet my father wills not war : 
And, 'sdeath ! myself, what care I, war or no ? 
But then this question of your troth remains : 
And there's a downright honest meaning in her ; 270 

She flies too high, she flies too high ! and yet 
She ask\l but space and fairplay for her scheme ; 
She prest and prest it on me — I myself. 
What know I of these things ? but, life and soul ! 
I thought her half-right talking of her wrongs ; 
I say she flies too high, 'sdeath ! what of that ? 
I take her for the flower of womankind. 
And so I often told her, right or wrong. 
And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves. 
And, right or wrong, I care not : this is all, 280 

I stand upon her side : she made me swear it — 

254. 3Iorio?is, helmets ; the helmets shine with the rays of the 
morning as Sirius does when rising from the wave. The simile is 
from Homer. Iliad, v., 5. 

266. 'Sdeath, God's death, meaning the death on the Cross ; an 
old oath. 

269. Troth, betrothal. 



v.] A MEDLEY 93 

''Sdeath — and with solemn I'ites by candle-light — 

Swear by St. something — I forget her name — 

Her that talked down the fifty wisest men ; 

She was a princess too ; and so I swore. 

Come, this is all ; she will not : waive your claim : 

If not, the fonghten field, what else, at once 

Decides it, ^sdeath ! against my father's will.^' 

I lagg'd in answer loth to render up 
My precontract, and loth by brainless war 290 

To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; 
Till one of those two brothers, half aside 
And fingering at the hair about his lip. 
To prick us on to combat " Like to like ! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.-" 
A taunt that clench'd his purpose like a blow ! 
For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff. 
And sharp I answer'd, touch'd upon the point 
Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 
^' Decide it here : why not ? we are three to three." 300 

Then spake the third '' But three to three ? no more ? 
No more, and in our noble sister's cause ? 
More, more, for honour : every captain waits 
Hungry for honour, angry for his king. 
More, more, some fifty on a side, that each 
May breathe himself, and quick ! by overthrow 
Of these or those, the question settled die." 

284. Rer, St. Catherine of Alexandria, a half-mythical Christian 
saint of the fourth century, patroness of philosophy, who converted 
fifty learned men sent by the Emperor Maxentius to dispute with her. 

285. Princess, St. Catherine was a daughter of Sabinella, Queen of 
Egypt, and of Costus, half-brother of the Emperor Constantine. 

299. Cowards to their shame, afraid to face the shame they would 
feel, though wrongly, for not fighting ; or some may prefer the sim- 
pler interpretation — so as to bring on them shame, or to their 
dishonor. 

306. Breathe, exercise. 



94 THE PRINCESS [V. 

'^ Yea," answered I, ^'^for this wild wreath of air. 
This flake of rainbow flying on the highest 
Foam of men's deeds — this honour, if ye wilh 310 

It needs must be for honour if at all : 
Since, what decision ? if we fail, we fail. 
And if we win, we fail : she would not keep 
Her compact." ^^'Sdeath ! but we will send to her," 
Said Arac, ^''worthy reasons why she should 
Bide by this issue : let our missive thro'. 
And you shall have her answer by the word." 

'' Boys ! " shriek'd the old king, but vainlier than a hen 
To her false daughters in the pool ; for none 
Kegarded ; neither seem'd there more to say : 320 

Back rode we to my father's camp, and found 
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates, 
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim. 
Or by denial flush her babbling wells 
With her own people's life : three times he went : 
The first, he blew and blew, but none appear'd : 
He batter'd at the doors ; none came : the next, 
An awful voice within had warn'd him thence : 
The third, and those eight daughters of the plough 
Came sallying thro' the gates, and caught his hair, 330 
And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek 
They made him wild : not less one glance he caught 
Thro' open doors of Ida station'd there 
Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm 
Tho' compass'd by two armies and the noise 
Of arms ; and standing like a stately Pine 
Set in a cataract on an island-crag, 

316. Bide by this issue, stand by the result of the fight. 

317. Bij the word, in the very words she uses in her reply. 
319. False daughters, ducks that she has hatched. 

323. Cede, grant. 

324. Flush, fill full, with also the second meaning, stain red. 



v.] A MEDLEY 95 

When storm is on the heights, and right and left 
SuckM from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
The torrents, dash^'d to the vale : and yet her will 340 
Bred will in me to overcome it or fall. 

But when I told the king that I was pledged 
To fight in tourney for my bride, he clashed 
His iron palms together with a cry ; 
Himself would tilt it out among the lads : 
But overborne by all his bearded lords 
AVith reasons drawn from age and state, perforce 
He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur : 
And many a bold knight started up in heat. 
And sware to combat for my claim till death. 350 

All on this side the palace ran the field 
Flat to the garden-wall ; and likewise here. 
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, 
A columned entry shone and marble stairs, 
And great bronze valves, emboss'd with Tomyris 
And what she did to Cyrus after fight. 
But now fast barr'd : so here upon the flat 
All that long morn the lists were hammer'd up, 
And all that morn the heralds to and fro. 
With message and defiance, went and came ; 360 

Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand. 
But shaken here and there, and rolling words 
Oration-like. I kiss'd it and I read. 

338. Right and left; i.e., of the pine which stands directly over 
the cataract, with the rapids on either side uniting in the fall below, 

344. Iron palms, gauntlets. 

355. Valves, gates. 

Tomyris, the queen of the Massagetae, who, after defeating 
and killing Cyrus (529 B.C.), took his head, and dipping it in blood, 
bade him drink his fill. 

358. Wallace refers to Scott's Ivanhoe, ch. viii., as a convenient 
source for a vivid account of these preparations. 



96 THE PRINCESS [V. 

" brother, you have known the pangs we felt, 
What heats of indignation when we heard 
Of those that iron-cramp'd their women's feet : 
Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride 
Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; 
Of living hearts that crack within the fire 
Where smoulder their dead despots ; and of those, — 370 
Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling 
Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops 
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart 
Made for all noble motion : and I saw 
That equal baseness lived in sleeker times 
AVith smoother men : the old leaven leavened all : 
Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights. 
No woman named : therefore I set my face 
Against all men, and lived but for mine own. 
Farofl from men I built a fold for them : 380 

I stored it full of rich memorial : 
I fenced it round with gallant institutes. 
And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey 
And prosperM ; till a rout of saucy boys 
Brake on us at our books, and marr'd our peace, 
Mask'd like our maids, blustering I know not what 
Of insolence and love, some pretext held 
Of baby troth, invalid, since my will 
Seal'd not the bond — the striplings ! — for their sport !— - 
I tamed my leopards : shall I not tame these ? 390 

366. Cf. II., 118. 

367. Lands, Russia, 

369. In India the widow was burned on her husband's funeral pyre. 

371. Prophetic pity, fearing that their daughters would not be 
married before a certain age, and hence in Hindoo opinion would be 
dishonored. 

372. Flood, the Ganges. 

378. The vulture swoops down on the infants as soon as they are 
thrown into the river. 

381. Memorial, commemorative works of art. 

382. Institutes, regulations. 



v.] A MEDLEY 97 

Or you ? or I ? for since you think me touched 

In honour — what, I would not aught of false — 

Is not our cause pure ? and whereas I know 

Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood 

You draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide 

What end soever : fail you will not. Still 

Take not his life : he risked it for my own ; 

His mother lives : yet whatsoe'er you do. 

Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. dear 

Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you 400 

The sole men to be mingled with our cause, 

The sole men we shall prize in the after-time. 

Your very armour hallow'd, and your statues 

Rear'd, sung to, when, this gad-fly brush'd aside, 

AVe plant a solid foot into the Time, 

And mould a generation strong to move 

With claim on claim from right to right, till she 

Whose name is yoked with children's, knoAV herself ; 

And Knowledge in our own land make her free. 

And, ever following those two crowned twins, 410 

Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain 

Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 

Between the Northern and the Southern morn." 

Then came a postscript dash'd across the rest. 
" See that there be no traitors in your camp : 

400. Woma7i's Angel, cf. I., 207. 

404. Gad-fly, this present petty trouble. 

405. Time, the contemporary progressive age. 

408. Yoked with childreii's. Women and children are spoken of 
and classed together as dependants, persons who require protection 
and should give obedience. 

411. Commerce often follows conquest ; and these two, Trade and 
Power, will extend civilization, of which freedom is the fiery seed, 
over the earth. The thought is natural to an Englishman, and the 
view is frequently expressed by Tennyson. 

412. All that orbs, all that is sphered between the two poles ; i.e., 
the whole orb of earth. 



98 THE PRINCESS [V. 

We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust 

Since our arms faiFd — this Egypt-plague of men ! 

Almost our maids were better at their homes^ 

Than thus man-girdled here : indeed I think 

Our chiefest comfort is the little child 420 

Of one unworthy mother ; which she left : 

She shall not have it back : the child shall grow 

To prize the authentic mother of her mind. 

I took it for an hour in mine own bed 

This morning : there the tender orphan hands 

Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence 

The wrath I nursed against the world : farewell/' 

I ceased ; he said, " Stubborn, but she may sit 
Upon a king's right hand in thunderstorms. 
And breed up warriors ! See now, tho' yourself 430 

Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs 
That swallow common sense, the spindling king, 
This Gama svvamp'd in lazy tolerance. 
When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up. 
And topples down the scales ; but this is fixt 
As are the roots of earth and base of all ; 
Man for the field and woman for the hearth : 
Man for the sword and for the needle she : 
Man with the head and woman with the heart : 
Man to command and woman to obey ; 440 

All else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare 
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills 

417. Arms, Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche. 

Egypt-plague, as if men were a pestilence of frogs or the other 
creatures that were sent on Egypt. Exodus viii.-x. 

423. Authentic mother. The Princess wishes to regard the one who 
forms the child's mind as its true mother. 

431. The metaphor is that of the will-o'-the-wisp. 

434. Gama's weakness is the occasion of the ascendancy of the 
Princess. 

441. The gray mare. The allusion is to the proverb, "the gray 
mare is the better horse, " used of a wife who rules her husband. 



v.] A MEDLEY 99 

From tile to scullery, and her small goodman 

Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell 

Mix with his hearth : but you — she's yet a colt — 

Take, break her : strongly groom'd and straitly curbed 

She might not rank with those detestable 

That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl 

Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. 

They say she's comely ; there's the fairer chance : 450 

/ like her none the less for rating at her ! 

Besides, the woman wed is not as we, 

But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace 

Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 

The bearing and the training of a child 

Is woman's wisdom." 

Thus the hard old king : 
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon : 
I pored upon her letter which I held, 
And on the little clause " take not his life : " 
I mused on that wild morning in the woods, 460 

And on the " Follow, follow, thou shalt win : " 
I thought on all the wrathful king had said, 
And how the strange betrothment was to end : 
Then I remember'd that burnt sorcerer's curse 
That one should fight with shadows and should fall ; 
And like a flash the weird affection came : 
King, camp and college turn'd to hollow shows ; 
I seem'd to move in old memorial tilts. 
And doing battle with forgotten ghosts 
To dream myself the shadow of a dream : 470 

And ere I woke it was the point of noon. 
The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed 
We enter'd in, and waited, fifty there 

443. Tile to scullery, roof to cellar. 

448. Bantling, infant. 

449. Potherbs, vegetables. 
460. 3Iorning. Cf. I„ 90-100. 
472. Empanoplied, fully armed. 



100 THE PRINCESS [V. 

Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared 

At the barrier like a wild horn in a land 

Of echoes, and a moment, and once more 

The trumpet, and again : at which the storm 

Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 

And riders front to front, until they closed 

In conflict with the crash of shivering points, 480 

And thunder. Yet it seem'd a dream, I dream^'d 

Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed. 

And into fiery splinters leapt the lance. 

And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. 

Part sat like rocks : part reel'd but kept their seats : 

Part roird on the earth and rose again and drew : 

Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down 

From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down 

From Arac^s arm, as from a giant's flail. 

The large blows rainM, as here and everywhere 490 

He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists. 

And all the plain, — brand, mace, and shaft, and shield — 

Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil bang'd 

With hammers ; till I thought, can this be he 

From Gama's dwarfish loins ? if this be so. 

The mother makes us most — and in my dream 

I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front 

Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes. 

And highest, among the statues, statue-like. 

Between a cymbal'd Miriam and a Jael, 500 

With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, 

A single band of gold about her hair, 

475. Horn. Cf. Song, page GO. 

478. Bare on, bore forward. 

488. Two hulks, his brothers. 

491. 3Iellay, the confused fight. 

500. Miriam, the Hebrew prophetess, who sang to the cymbals the 
song of triumph over Pharaoh by the Red Sea. Exodus xv. 20, 21. 
Jael, the Jewish woman who killed Sisera by driving a nail 
through his temple. Judges iv. 17-22. 



v.] A MEDLEY 101 

Like a Saint's glory up in heaven : but sAe 

No saint — inexorable — no tenderness — 

Too hard, too cruel : yet she sees me fight. 

Yea, let her see me fall ! with that I drave 

Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, 

And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream 

All that I would. But that large-moulded man, 

His visage all agrin as at a wake, 510 

Made at me thro" the press, and, staggering back 

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came 

As comes a pillar of electric cloud. 

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains, 

And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes 

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits. 

And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 

Reels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything 

Gave way before him : only Florian, he 

That loved me closer than his own right eye, 520 

Thrust in between ; but Arac rode him down : 

And Cyril seeing it, push'd against the Prince, 

With Psyche's colour round his helmet, tough, 

Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms ; 

But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote 

And threw him : last I spurr'd ; I felt my veins 

Stretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand. 

And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung, 

Till I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanced, 

I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth 530 

Flow'd from me ; darkness closed me ; and I fell. 

503. SamVs glory, aureole, the ring of light round the head of a 
saint as represented in pictures. 

507-508. A Prince, And Cyril, one, the two brothers of Arac. Cf. 
v., 488. 

512. The liorse and horseman, the press of knights generally. 

513. Pillar, a cyclone. 

530, 531. Dream and truth Ploiv'd from ine. His trance deepened 
into entire unconsciousness. 



102 THE PRINCESS [VL 



VI. 

Home they brought her warrior dead 
She nor swoon'd, nor utter'd cry : 

All her maidens, watching, said, 
'' She must weep or she will die/' 

Then they praised him, soft and low, 
Caird him worthy to be loved, 

Truest friend and noblest foe ; 
Yet she neither spoke nor moved. 

Stole a maiden from her place. 
Lightly to the warrior stept, 

Took the face-cloth from the face ; 
Yet she neither moved nor wept. 

Eose a nurse of ninety years. 
Set his child upon her knee — 

Like summer tempest came her tears- 
^' Sweet my child, I live for thee.'' 



VI.] A MEDLEY 103 



My dream had never died or lived again. 
As in some mystic middle state I lay ; 
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard : 
Tho^ if I saw not, yet they told me all 
So often that I speali as having seen. 

For so it seemed, or so they said to me, 
That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; 
That when onr side was vanquish^l and my cause 
For ever lost, there went up a great cry, 
The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran 10 

In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque 
And groveird on my body, and after him 
Game Psyche, sorrowing for Aglai'a. 

But high upon the palace Ida stood 
With Psyche^'s babe in arm : there on the roofs 
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang. 

'^ Our enemies have falFn, have falVn : the seed, 
The little seed they laugliM at in the dark. 
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk 
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side 20 

A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun. 

1. The sixth speaker here begins. The Prince means, in full, that 
his state of trance had either never passed, though he has just stated 
(c/. v., 531) that he was unconscious, or else that it now returned 
in his semi-conscious state. 

16. Great dame of Lapidoth, Deborah, wife of Lapidoth, the Hebrew 
prophetess, who sang the song of triumph ovei-«6isera. Judgesiy.-y. 

17. The song lii^ens the cause of woman to a tree, and sings its 
triumph under the image of a tree's growth. 



104 THE PRINCESS [VI. 

" Our enemies have falFn, have falFn : they came ; 
The leaves were wet with women's tears : they heard 
A noise of songs they would not understand : 
They marked it with the red cross to the fall, 
And would have strown it, and are falFn themselves. 

'' Our enemies have falFn, have falFn : they came. 
The woodmen with their axes : lo the tree ! 
But we will make it faggots for the hearth, 
And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, 30 

And boats and bridges for the use of men. 

''^ Our enemies have fall'n, have falFn: they struck; 
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew 
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain: 
The glittering axe was broken in their arms, 
Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade. 

^' Our enemies have falFn, but this shall grow 
A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth 
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power: and rolFd 
With music in the growing breeze of Time, 40 

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs 
Shall move the stony bases of the world. 

'^ And now, maids, behold our sanctuary 
Is violate, our laws broken :. fear we not 
To break them more in their behoof, whose arms 
Championed our cause and won it with a day 
Blanch'd in our annals, and perpetual feast. 
When dames and heroines of the golden year 
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, 
To rain an April of ovation round 50 

Their statues, borne aloft, the three : but come, 

25. They marked the tree with a red cross as a sign to the wood- 
men to fell it. 

47. Blancli'd, made a holiday. 

48. Golden year, the perfect age to come. 

49. Spring, blossoming shrubs, boughs, and flowers. 

50. Ovation, triumph. 



VI.] A MEDLEY 105 

We will be liberal^ since our rights are won. 

Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, 

111 nurses ; but descend, and proffer these 

The brethren of our blood and cause, that there 

Lie bruised and mainiM, the tender ministries 

Of female hands and hospitality." 

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, 
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led 
A hundred maids in train across the Park. 60 

Some cowl'd, and some bare-headed, on they came, 
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest : by them went 
The enamourM air sighing, and on their curls 
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell. 
And over them the tremulous isles of light 
Slided, they moving under shade : but Blanche 
At distance followM : so they came : anon 
Thro' open field into the lists they wound 
Timorously ; and as the leader of the herd 
That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, 70 

And followed up by a hundred airy does. 
Steps with a tender foot, light as on air. 
The lovely, lordly creature floated on 
To where her wounded brethren lay ; there stayed ; 
Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and prest 
Their hands and call'd them dear deliverers. 
And happy warriors, and immortal names, 
And said " You shall not lie in the tents but here. 
And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served 
With female hands and hospitality." 80 

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance. 
She past my way. Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye, 

65. Isles of light, the sunshine falling on them through the 
foUage. 

70. Fretwork, his antlers. 



106 THE PRINCESS [VI. 

Silent ; but when she saw me lying stark, 

Dishelm^d and mute, and motionlessly pale. 

Cold ev'n to her, she sighed ; and when she saw 

The haggard father's face and reverend beard 

Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood 

Of his own son, shudder'd, a twitch of pain 

Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past 90 

A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said : 

^'^He saved my life : my brother slew him for it.'^ 

No more : at which the king in bitter scorn 

Drew from my neck the painting and the tress. 

And held them up : she saw them, and a day 

Rose from the distance on her memory. 

When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tress 

AVith kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche : 

And then once more she look'd at my pale face : 

Till understanding all the foolish work 100 

Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all. 

Her iron will was broken in her mind ; 

Her noble heart was molten in her breast ; 

She bow'd, she set the child on the earth ; she laid 

A feeling finger on my brows, and presently 

^' Sire," she said, '^ he lives : he is not dead : 

let me have him with my brethren here 

In our own palace : we will tend on him 

Like one of these ; if so, by any means. 

To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make 110 

Our progress falter to the woman's goal." 

She said : but at the happy word '' he lives " 
My father stoop'd, re-father'd o'er my wounds. 
So those two foes above my fallen life. 
With brow to brow like night and evening mixt 
Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole 
A little nearer, till the babe that by us, 

94. Cf. I., 37, 38. 



VI.] A 3IEDLEY 107 

Half-Iapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, 

Lay like a new-falFn meteor on the grass, 

Uncared for, spied its mother and began 120 

A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance 

Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms 

And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal 

Brook'd not, but clamouring out ^^Mine — mine — not 

yours. 
It is not yours, but mine : give me the child ^' 
Ceased all on tremble : piteous was the cry : 
So stood the unhappy mother open-mouth'd. 
And turn'd each face her way : wan was her cheek 
With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn. 
Red grief and mother^s hunger in her eye, 130 

And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half 
The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst 
The laces toward her babe : but she nor cared 
Nor knew it, clamouring on, till Ida heard, 
Looked up, and rising slowly from me, stood 
Erect and silent, striking with her glance 
The mother, me, the child ; but he that lay 
Beside us, Cyril, batter'd as he was, 
TraiFd himself up on one knee : then he drew 
Her robe to meet his lips, and down she looked 140 

At the arm'd man sideways, pitying as it seemM, 
Or self-involved ; but when she learnt his face. 
Remembering his ill-omen'd song, arose 
Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew 
Tall as a figure lengthened on the sand 
When the tide ebbs in sunshine, and he said : 

" fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness 
That with your long locks play the Lion's mane ! 
But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible 

118. Golden hrede, embroidered with gold. 

119. Cf. II., 94. 

142. Self-involved, abstracted in her own thoughts. 



108 THE PRINCESS [VI. 

And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, 150 

We vanquished, you the Victor of your will. 

What would you more ? give her the child ! remain 

Orb^d in your isolation : he is dead. 

Or all as dead : henceforth we let you be : 

Win you the hearts of women ; arid beware 

Lest, where you seek the common love of these. 

The common hate with the revolving wheel 

Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis 

Break from a darkened future, crown'd with fire. 

And tread you out for ever : but howsoe'er 160 

Fix^d in yourself, never in your own arms 

To hold your own, deny not hers to her. 

Give her the child ! if, I say, you keep 

One pulse that beats true woman, if you loved 

The breast that fed or arm that dandled you. 

Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer. 

Give her the child ! or if you scorn to lay it. 

Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours. 

Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault 

The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, 170 

Give me it : / will give it her." 

He said : 
At first her eye with slow dilation rolFd 
Dry flame, she listening ; after sank and sank 
And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt 
Full on the child ; she took it : '' Pretty bud ! 
Lily of the vale ! half open'd bell of the woods ! 
Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a world 
Of traitorous friend and broken system made 
No purple in the distance, mystery. 

Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ; 180 

These men are hard upon us as of old, 

158. Nemesis, goddess of just, avenging fate. 

166. Port, portal. 

180. Love, wedded love. 



VI.] A MEDLEY 109 

We two must part : and yet how fain was I 

To dream thy cause embraced in mine, to think 

I might be something to thee, when I felt 

Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 

In the dead prime : but may thy mother prove 

As true to thee as false, false, false to me ! 

And, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it 

Gentle as freedom " — here she kissM it : then — 

'^All good go with thee ! take it Sir," and so 190 

Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands, 

AVho turned half-round to Psyche as she sprang 

To meet it, with an eye that swum in thanks ; 

Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot. 

And hugg'd and never hugg'd it close enough. 

And in her hunger mouth\l and mumbled it. 

And hid her bosom with it ; after that 

Put on more calm and added suppliantly : 

*^ We two were friends : I go to mine own land 
For ever : find some other : as for me 200 

I scarce am fit for your great plans : yet speak to me. 
Say one soft word and let me part forgiven/^ 

But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. 
Then Arac. '^^Ida — ^sdeath ! you blame the man ; 
You wrong yourselves — the woman is so hard 
Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! 
I am your warrior : I and mine have fought 
Your battle : kiss her : take her hand, she weeps : 
"Sdeath ! I would sooner fight thrice o^er than see it/^ 

But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground, 210 

And reddening in the furrows of his chin. 
And moved beyond his custom, Gama said : 

186. Dead prime, the darkness just before dawn. 
206. Grace, favor. 



110 THE PRINCESS [VI. 

'^Fve heard that there is iron in the blood. 
And I believe it. Not one word ? not one ? 
Whence drew you this steel temper ? not from me, 
Not from your mother, now a saint with saints. 
She said you had a heart — I heard her say it — 
^Our Ida has a heart ' — just ere she died — 
' But see that some one with authority 
Be near her stilP and I — I sought for one — 220 

All jDeople said she had authority — 
The Lady Blanche : much profit ! Not one word ; 
No ! tho^ your father sues : see how you stand 
Stiff as Lota's wife, and all the good knights maimM, 
I trust that there is no one hurt to death. 
For your wild whim : and was it then for this, 
Was it for this we gave our palace up. 
Where we withdrew from summer heats and state. 
And had our Avine and chess beneath the planes. 
And many a pleasant hour with her that^s gone, 230 

Ere you were born to vex us ? Is it kind ? 
Speak to her I say : is this not she of whom. 
When first she came, all flush'd you said to me 
Now had you got a friend of your own age. 
Now could you share your thought ; now should men see 
Two women faster welded in one love 
Than pairs of wedlock ; she you walk'd with, she 
You talk'd with, whole nights long, up in the tower. 
Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth. 
And right ascension, Heaven knows what : and now 240 
A word, but one, one little kindly word. 
Not one to spare her : out upon you, flint ! 
You love nor her, nor me, nor any ; nay. 
You shame your mother^s judgment too. Not one ? 
You will not ? well — no heart have you, or such 
As fancies like the vermin in a nut 

224. Lofs ivife. Cf. Genesis xix. 

239, 240. Terms of the higher mathematics and astronomy. 



VI.] A 3IEDLEY HX 

Have fretted all to dust and bitterness." 

So said the small king moved beyond his wont. 

But Ida stood nor spoke, drain'd of her force 
By many a varying influence and so long. 250 

Down thro' her limbs a drooping languor wept : 
Her head a little bent : and on her mouth 
A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon 
In a still water : then brake out my sire, 
Lifting his grim head from my wounds. '^ you. 
Woman, whom we thought woman even now. 
And were half fool'd to let you tend our son. 
Because he might have wish'd it — but we see 
The accomplice of your madness unforgiven. 
And think that you might mix his draught with 

death, 260 

When your skies change again : the rougher hand 
Is safer : on to the tents : take up the Prince." 

He rose, and while each ear was prick'd to attend 
A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimm'd her broke 
A genial warmth and light once more, and shone 
Thro' glittering drops on her sad friend. 

" Come hither. 

Psyche," she cried out, ^^ embrace me, come. 
Quick while I melt ; make reconcilement sure 
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour : 

Come to the hollow heart they slander so ! 270 

Kiss and be friends, like children being chid ! 
/ seem no more : / want forgiveness too : 

1 should have had to do with none but maids. 
That have no links with men. Ah false but dear. 
Dear traitor, too much loved, why ? — why ? — Yet see. 
Before these kings we embrace you yet once more 
With all forgiveness, all oblivion. 

And trust, not love, you less. 

266. Drops, tears. 



112 TEE PRINCESS [VI. 

And now, sire. 
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him. 
Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, 280 

This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; 
Taunt me no more : yourself and yours shall have 
Free adit ; we will scatter all our maids 
Till happier times each to her proper hearth : 
What use to keep them here — now ? grant my prayer. 
Help, father, brother, help ; speak to the king : 
Thaw this male nature to some touch of that 
AYhich kills me with myself, and drags me down 
From my fixt height to mob me up with all 
The soft and milky rabble of womankind, 290 

Poor weakling ev'n as they are/' 

Passionate tears 
Followed : the king replied, not : Cyril said : 
^^ Your brother. Lady, — Florian, — ask for him 
Of your great head — for he is wounded too — 
That you may tend upon him with the Prince/^ 
'^Ay so," said Ida with a bitter smile, 
^' Our laws are broken : let him enter too.'' 
Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song. 
And had a cousin tumbled on the plain, 
Petition'd too for him. ''Ay so," she said, 300 

" I stagger in the stream : I cannot keep 
My heart an eddy from the brawling hour : 
AVe break our laws with ease, but let it be." 
''Ay so ?" said Blanche : " Amazed am I to hear 
Your Highness : but your Highness breaks with ease 
The law your Highness did not make : 'twas I. 
I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind. 
And block'd them out ; but these men came to woo 
Your Highness — verily I think to win." 

283. Adit, entrance. 

284. Proper, own. 

289. 3Ioh me up, make me one of the mob of. 
298. Song. Cf. IV., 21. 



VI.] A MEDLEY 113 

So slie, and turned askance a wintry eye ; 310 

But Ida with a voice^ that like a bell 
Toird by an earthquake in a trembling tower, 
Eang ruin, answered full of grief and scorn. 

^^ Fling 'Our doors wide ! all, all, not one, but all. 
Not only he, but by my mother's soul, 
Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe. 
Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit. 
Till the storm die ! but had you stood by us. 
The roar that breaks the Pharos from his base 
Had left us rock. She fain would sting us too, 320 

But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. 
We brook no further insult but are gone." 

She turned ; the very nape of her white neck 
Was rosed with indignation : but the Prince 
Her brother came ; the king her father charm'd 
Her wounded soul with words : nor did mine own 
Eefuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. 

Then us they lifted up, dead weights, and bare 
Straight to the doors : to them the doors gave way 
Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shrieked 330 

The virgin marble under iron heels : 
And on they moved and gain'd the hall, and there 
Eested : but great the crush was, and each base. 
To left and right, of those tall columns drown'd 
In silken fluctuation and the swarm 
Of female whisperers : at the further end 
W^as Ida by the throne, the two great cats 
Close by her, like supporters on a shield, 

319. Pharos, the famous ancient lighthouse built on the isle of 
Pharos, near Alexandria. 

330. Vestal, sacred to maidenhood. 

337. Cats, the tame leopards. 

338. Supporters, the figures that stand on either side of a coat of 
arms. 



114 THE PRINCESS [VI. 

Bow-back'd with fear : but in the centre stood 

The common men with rolling eyes ; amazed 340 

They glared npon the women, and aghast 

The women stared at these, all silent, save 

When armour clashM or jingled, while the day. 

Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 

A flying splendour out of brass and steel, 

That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, 

Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm, 

Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame, 

And now and then an echo started up. 

And shuddering fled from room to room, and died 350 

Of fright in far apartments. 

Then the voice 
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance : 
And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro' 
The long-laid galleries past a hundred doors 
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due 
To languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; 
And others otherwhere they laid ; and all 
That afternoon a sound arose of hoof 
And chariot, many a maiden passing home 
Till happier times ; but some were left of those 360 

Held sagest, and the great lords out and in. 
From those two hosts that lay beside the walls, 
Walk'd at their will, and every tiling was changed. 

348. Iloon. Diana is represented with her symbol, the crescent 
moon, above her head Kke a crown. 
352. Ordinance, orders. 
355. Due, the due of, that which illness should have. 



VII.] A MEDLEY 115 



VII. 



Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea ; 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape 
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape ; 

But too fond, when have I answered thee ? 

Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : what answer should I give ? 
I love not hollow cheek or faded eye : 
Yet, my friend, I will not have thee die ! 

Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 

Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are seaFd : 
I strove against the stream and all in vain : 
Let the great river take me to the main : 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ; 

Ask me no more. 



116 TEE PRINCESS [VII. 



So was their sanctuary violated. 

So their fair college turned to hospital ; 

At first with all confusion : by and by 

Sweet order lived again with other laws : 

A kindlier influence reignM ; and everywhere 

Low voices with the ministering hand 

Hung round the sick : the maidens came, they talk\I, 

They sang, they read : till she not fair began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble ; and to and fro 10 

AVith books, with flowers, with Angel offices. 

Like creatures native unto gracious act. 

And in their own clear element, they moved. 

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, 
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 
Old studies failed ; seldom she spoke : but oft 
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men 
Darkening her female field : void was her use. 
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 20 

O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, 
Blot out the slope of sea from 'verge to shore. 
And suck the blinding splendour from the sand. 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 
Expunge the world : so fared she gazing there ; 

1. The seventh and last speaker here begins. 

12. Native imto, born in the world of. 

17. Clomb, climbed. 

18: Leaguer, the armies lying as in siege about the place. 

19. Void ivas her use, gone was her customary occupation. 

23. Verge, horizon. 

25. Tar7i, small dark pond. 



VII.] A 3IEDLEY 117 

So blackenM all her world in secret, blank 

And waste it seem'd and vain ; till down she came, 

And found fair peace once more among the sick. 

And twilight dawnM ; and morn by morn the lark 30 
Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I 
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life : 
And twilight gloom'd ; and broader-grown the bowers 
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, 
Star after star, arose and fell ; but I, 
Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay 
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe, 
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand 
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. 

But Psyche tended Florian : with her oft, 40 

Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left 
Her child among us, willing she should keep 
Court-favour : here and there the small bright head, 
A light of healing, glanced about the couch. 
Or thro^ the parted silks the tender face 
Peeped, shining in upon the wounded man 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain ; nor seem'd it strange that soon 
He rose up whole, and those fair charities 50 

Join\l. at her side ; nor stranger seemed that hearts 
So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love. 
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, 
And slip at once all-fragrant into one. 

Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd 
At first with Psyche. Not tho^ Blanche had sworn 

31. Gyres, circles. 
45. Silks, curtains of the beds. 

51. Join''d. Florian united with Melissa in her services to the 
wounded. 



118 THE PRINCESS [VII. 

That after that dark night among the fields 

She needs must wed him for her own good name ; 

Not tho^ he built upon the babe restored ; 60 

Nor tho^ she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd 

To incense the Head once more : till on a day 

When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind 

Seen but of Psyche : on her foot she hung 

A moment, and she heard, at which her face 

A little flusliM, and she past on ; but each 

Assumed from thence a half-consent involved 

In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. 

Nor only these : Love in the sacred halls 
Held carnival at will, and flying struck 70 

With showers of random sweet on maid and man. 
Nor did her father cease to ^Dress my claim. 
Nor did mine own, now reconciled ; nor yet 
Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; 
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory. 

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat : 
Then came a change ; for sometimes I would catch 
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard. 
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek 
^' You are not Ida ; '' clasp it once again, 80 

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not. 
And call her sweet, as if in irony, 
And call her hard and cold which seemed a truth : 
And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind. 
And often she believed that I should die : 
Till out of long frustration of her care. 
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons. 
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks 

60. Built, built his hopes. Cf. V., 101, 102. 
67, 68. Involved In stillness, impHed by her silence. 
71. Showers. At a carnival it is the custom to pelt the crowds 
with flowers and sweetmeats. 
88. Dead, the dead of night. 



VIL] A MEDLEY 119 

Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or calPd 

On flying Time from all their silver tongues — 90 

And out of memories of her kindlier days. 

And sidelong glances at my father's grief. 

And at the happy lovers heart in heart — 

And out of hauntings of my spoken love, 

And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream, 

And often feeling of the helpless hands. 

And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek — 

From all a closer interest flourished up, 

Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these. 

Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears 100 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself. 

But such as gathered colour day by day. 

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness : it was evening : silent light 
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought 
Two grand designs ; for on one side arose 
The women up in wild revolt, and stormed 
At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd 
The forum, and half-crush'd among the rest 110 

A dwarf -like Cato cower'd. On the other side 
Hortensia spoke against the tax ; behind, 
A train of dames : by axe and eagle sat, 
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls, 

109. Oppicm Imv, the law restricting women in the use of orna- 
ments and in similar matters, enacted during the Punic wars (215 
B.C.); in Cato's consulate (195 b.c.) they rose in the Roman Forum 
against the law and had it repealed. 

Titanic, towering. The Titans were the giants of classical 
mythology. 

112. Hortensia, a Roman matron who spoke against a tax imposed 
on women during the second triumvirate (44 B.C.). 

113. Ax& and eagle, the signs, respectively, of civil and military 
power. 



120 THE PRINCESS [VII. 

And half tlie wolf's-milk curdled in tlieir veins, 
The fierce triumvirs : and before them paused 
Hortensia pleading : angry was her face. 

I saw the forms : I knew not where I was : 
They did but look like hollow shows ; nor more 
Sweet Ida : palm to palm she sat : the dew 120 

Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape 
And rounder seem'd : I moved : I sigh'd : a touch 
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand : 
Then all for languor and self-pity ran 
Mine down my face, and with what life I had. 
And like a flower that cannot all unfold, 
So drenched it is with tempest, to the sun. 
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her 
Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : 

" If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream, 130 
I would but ask you to fulfil yourself : 
But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 
I ask you nothing : only, if a dream. 
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.^' 

I could no more, but lay like one in trance. 
That hears his burial talked of by his friends. 
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign, 
But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd ; she paused ; 
She stoop'd ; and out of languor leapt a cry ; 140 

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 
And I believed that in the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida^s at the lips ; 
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 
Glowing all over noble shame ; and all 
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe, 

115. Wolfs-milk. Romulus and Hemus were suckled by a wolf. 
140. Out of languor, out of the Prince's weakness. 



VII.] A MEDLEY 121 

And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 

Than in her mould that other, when she came 

From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 

And down the streaming crystal dropt ; and she 150 

Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides. 

Naked, a double light in air and wave, 

To meet her Graces, where they decked her out 

For worship without end ; nor end of mine. 

Stateliest, for thee ! but mute she glided forth, 

Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, 

Fiird thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep. 

Deep in tlie night I woke : she, near me, held 
A volume of the Poets of her land : 
There to herself, all in low tones, she. read. 160 

" Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white ; 
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk ; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font : 
The fire-fly wakens : waken thou with me. 

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost. 
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars. 
And all thy heart lies open unto me. 

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves 
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 170 

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up. 
And slips into the bosom of the lake : 

147. Mood, spirit. 

148. Mould, physical form. 

Thai other. Aphrodite, when she was born of the sea, out of 
which she rose, and was afterward clothed by the Graces with every 
charm of beauty. 

154. Mine, my worship. 

155. Thee, the Princess. 

167. Danae, the mother of Perseus, imprisoned in a brazen tower 
and there wooed by Zeus in a rain of gold. 



122 THE PRINCESS [VII. 

So fold thyself, my dearest, tlioii, and slip 
Into my bosom and be lost in me/' 

I heard her turn the page ; she found a small 
Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read : 

" Come down, maid, from yonder mountain height : 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang) 
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills ? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 180 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire ; 
And come, for Love is of the valley, come. 
For Love is of the valley, come thou down 
And find him ; by the happy threshold, he. 
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize. 
Or red with spirted purple of the vats. 
Or foxlike in the vine ; nor cares to walk 
AVith Death and Morning on the silver horns. 
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, 190 

Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice. 
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors : 
But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 
To find him in the valley ; let the wild 
Lean-headed Eagles 3'elp alone, and leave 
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke. 
That like a broken purpose waste in air : 
So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales 200 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth 

189. There is no life on the peaks ; but the words suggest rather 
the spectral white of the snow under the pallor of the dawn ; "sil- 
ver " is the color at the first break of light. 

190. Wliite, with snow. 

191-193. The glacier slanting down in crevasses, from the foot of 
which the stream issues. 

198. Water-smoke, the narrow cascades, which separate into drops 
through the great height of the fall, and appear like smoke. Tenny- 
son observed them on his Pyrenean journey, from which much of 
his mountain scenery is derived. 

301. Pillars of the hearth, the smoke of the cottages. 



VII.] A 31EDLEY 123 

Arise to thee ; the children call, and I 
Thy sliepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound. 
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet ; 
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro^ the lawn, 
The moan of doves in immemorial elms. 
And murmuring of innumerable bees/' 

So she low-toned ; while with shut eyes I lay 
Listening ; then looked. Pale was the perfect face ; 
The bosom with long sighs laboured ; and meek 210 

Seemed the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes. 
And the voice trembled and the hand. She said 
Brokenly, that she knew it, she had faiFd 
In sweet humility ; had faiFd in all ; 
That all her labour was but as a block 
Left in the quarry ; but she still were loth. 
She still were loth to yield herself to one 
That wholly scorn'd to help their equal rights 
Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws. 
She pray'd me not to judge their cause from her 220 

That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than power 
In knowledge : something wild within her breast, 
A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 
And she had nursed me there from week to week : 
Much had she learnt in little time. In part 
It was ill counsel had misled the girl 
To vex true hearts : yet was she but a girl — 
^' Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce ! 
When comes another such ? never, I think. 
Till the Sun drop, dead, from the signs." 

Her voice 230 
Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands, 
And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past 
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; 
Till notice of a change in the dark world 

330. Sigiis. The twelve signs of the Zodiac, through which lies 
the sun's apparent path in the heaven of stars. 
234. Change, the coming of dawn. 



124 THE PRINCESS [VTI. 

Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird. 
That early woke to feed her little ones, 
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light : 
She moved, and at her feet the volume fell. 

*^ Blame not thyself too much," I said, "^nor blame 
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws ; 240 

These were the rough ways of the world till now. - 
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know 
The woman^s cause is man's : they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free : 
For she that out of Lethe scales with man 
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal. 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable. 
How shall men grow ? but work no more alone ! 250 

Our place is much : as far as in us lies 
We two will serve them both in aiding her — 
Will clear away the parasitic forms 
That seem to keep her up but drag her down — 
Will leave her space to burgeon out of all 
Within her — let her make herself her own 
To give or keep, to live and learn and be 
All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 
Eor woman is not undevelopt man. 

But diverse : could we make her as the man, 260 

Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this. 
Not like to like, but like in difference. 
Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

245. Lethe, the river of oblivion in Hades, here used of the unknown 
before birth. 

248. Fair young planet, the children of the whole earth. 

253. Parasitic forms, the conventions that, like vines about a tree, 
seem to embrace it, but really sap its life. 

255. Burgeon, blossom. 



VIL] A 3IEDLEY ' 125 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height. 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man. 

Like perfect music unto noble words ; 270 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers, 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

Self-reverent each and reverencing each. 

Distinct in individualities. 

But like each other ev'n as those who love. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men : 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm : 

Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 

May these things be ! " 

Sighing she spoke " I fear 280 
They will not.'' 

'^Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives, and this proud watchwerd rest 
Of equal ; seeing either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils 
Defect in each, and always thought in thought. 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, 
The single pure and perfect animal. 
The two-ceird heart beating, with one full stroke, 
Life." 

And again sighing she spoke : ^^ A dream 290 

That once was mine ! what woman taught you this ? " 

372. Full-sumrri'd, properly developed. 

277. Statelier Eden, golden age. 

282. Rest, let rest. 

289. The metaphor is one of those at once beautiful and perfect 
which distinguish Tennyson, and is the more striking as being drawn 
from science. 



126 THE PRINCESS [VII. 

" Alone/' I said, " from earlier than I know. 
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, 
I loved the woman : he, that doth not, lives 
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self, 
Or pines in sad experience worse than death. 
Or keeps his winged affections dipt with crime : 
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 300 

No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the Gods and men. 
Who looked all native to her place, and yet 
On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
Svvay'd to her from their orbits as they moved. 
And girdled her with music. Happy he 
With such a mother ! faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 310 
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 
He shall not blind his soul with clay." 

'' But I," 
Said Ida, tremulously, ''so all unlike — 
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words : 
This mother is your model. I have heard 
Of your strange doubts : they well might be : I seem 
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; 
You cannot love me." 

''Nay but thee "I said 
"From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes. 
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw 320 

Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods 

298. One. It is understood that Tennyson here alludes to his own 
mother. 

308. Music. The metaphor is derived from the poetical belief 
that the stars make music in their motions. 

331. Thee woman, that thou wast woman. 



VII.] A MEDLEY 127 

That masked thee from men^s reverence up, and forced 

Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood : now, 

Giv^n back to life, to life indeed, thro^ thee. 

Indeed I love : the new day comes, the light 

Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults 

Lived over : lift thine eyes ; my doubts are dead. 

My haunting sense of hollow shows i the change. 

This truthful change in thee has kilFd it. Dear, 

Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 330 

Like yonder morning on the blind half-world ; 

Approach and fear not ; breathe upon my brows; 

In that fine air I tremble, all the past 

Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this 

Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come 

Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels 

Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, 

I waste my heart in signs : let be. My bride. 

My wife, my life. we will walk this world. 

Yoked in all exercise of noble end, 340 

And so thro^ those dark gates across the wild 

That no man knows. Indeed I love thee : come. 

Yield thyself up : my hopes and thine are one : 

Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself ; 

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."" 

331. Blind half -world, the half of the world yet in the darkness of 
night. 
338. Sig7is, metaphors. 
341, Those dark gates, death. 



128 THE PRINCESS [Conclusion 



CONCLUSION. 

So closed our tale, of which I give you all 

The random scheme as wildly as it rose : 

The words are mostly mine ; for when we ceased 

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 

" I wish she had not yielded ! '' then to me, 

'^ What, if you drest it up poetically ! " 

So pray'd the men, the women : I gave assent : 

Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven 

Together in one sheaf ? What style could suit ? 

The men required that I should give throughout 10 

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque, 

AVith which we banterM little Lilia first : 

The women — and perhaps they felt their power. 

For something in the ballads which they sang, 

Or in their silent influence as they sat. 

Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque, 

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — 

They hated banter, wished for something real, 

A gallant fight, a noble princess — why 

Not make her true-heroic — true sublime ? 30 

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close ? 

Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. 

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two. 

Betwixt the mockers and the realists : 

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both^ 

And yet to give the story as it rose, 

I moved as in a strange diagonal. 

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part 
In our dispute : the sequel of the tale 30 

Had touched her ; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass, 

27. Diagonal, the resultant of two forces. 



Conclusion] A MEDLEY 129 

She flung it from her, thinking : last, she fixt 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
^' You — tell us what we are " who might have told, 
For she was crammed with theories out of books, 
But that there rose a shout : the gates were closed 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now. 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these : we climb'd 
The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw 40 

The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves ; 
Trim hamlets ; here and there a rustic tower 
Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat ; 
The shimmering glimpses of a stream ; the seas ; 
A red sail, or a white ; and far beyond. 
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 

*' Look there, a garden ! " said my college friend, 
The Tory member's elder son, " and there ! 50 

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off. 
And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 
A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — 
Some sense of duty, something of a faith. 
Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 
Some patient force to change them when we will. 
Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — 
But yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat, 
Tlie gravest citizen seems to lose his head. 
The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, 60 

The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 

49. Garden, England. 

50. There, France. This is the usual strain of Tennyson in his 
not infrequent references to that country. 

51. Narrow sea, Dover Straits. 
58. Heat, the French revolutions. 



130 TH^ PRINCESS [Conclusion 

A kingdom topples over with a shriek 

Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 

In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 

Kevolts, republics, revolutions, most 

No graver than a schoolboys^ barring out ; 

Too comic for the solemn things they are. 

Too solemn for the comic touches in them. 

Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 

As some of theirs — God bless the narrow seas ! 70 

I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad/^ 

'^ Have patience," I replied, '' ourselves are full 
Of social wrong ; and maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth ; 
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd. 
The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides.'* 

In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails, 80 

And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood. 
Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks, 
Among six boys, head under head, and looked 
No little lily-handed Baronet he, 
A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman, 
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 
A. raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
A patron of some thirty charities, 
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none ; 90 

66. Barring out, the barring of the door against the master. 

78. Go-cart, a contrivance for supporting children in learning to 
walk. 

87. Pine, pineapples. 

90. Quarter-sessions, a justice-of-the-peace court at which minor 
offences are tried. 



Conclusion] A MEDLEY 131 

Fair-hair'd and redder tlian a windy morn ; 

Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 

That stood the nearest— now addressed to speech— 

Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed 

Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 

To follow : a shout rose again, and made 

The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 

From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer 

From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang 

Beyond the bourn of sunset ; 0, a shout 100 

More joyful than the city-roar that hails 

Premier or king ! Why should not these great Sirs 

Give up their parks some dozen times a year 

To let the people breathe ? So thrice they cried, 

I likewise, and in groups they streamed away. 

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on. 
So much the gathering darkness charm'd : we sat 
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie. 
Perchance upon the future man : the walls 
Blacken'd about us, bats wheeFd, and owls whoop'd, 110 
And gradually the powers of the night. 
That range above the region of the wind, 
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up 
Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds. 
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly. 
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ealph 
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went. 

94. Closed, included. 

97. Rookery, the rooks ; they fly in a long line. 

98. Branches, antlers. 
100. Bour7i, limit. 

112. Region of the ivind, the atmosphere. 

113. Broke them up, divided the darkness by the coming out of 
the stars. 



APPENDIX 

LONGER NOTES. 
I. 

The History of the Poem. 

Tennyson freely altered and enlarged his poems after their first 
publication. The Princess affords the most striking example of 
this habit. The first edition appeared in 1847, and was followed 
by others dated 1848, 1850, 1851, and 1853, before the work 
reached its present form. The most important changes were the 
introduction of the six Songs in the third edition ; of the passages 
relating to the "weird seizures" in the fourth edition, in which 
also the Prologue and Conclusion were rewritten ; and of lines 
35-48 of the Prologue, in the fifth edition. The Dedication was 
added in tlie second edition. The variations of all editions are 
given by Rolfe, but such study seems to belong rather to the close 
and advanced student of poetry than to the ordinary scholar, and 
for that reason these readings have been here omitted. 

The original suggestion of the poem has been sought in earlier 
literature, but it is unlikely that it was derived from such sources ; 
the poem was a contemporary work and naturally arose from its 
times. It is of interest, however, to refer to the Shaksperian 
parallel of withdrawal from the world for study, on the part of 
men, away from woman's society, in Love''s Labour Lost; and a 
passage in Johnson's Rasselas (chapter xlix.) has been brought 
into service to illustrate IL, 43. It is as follows : " The Princess 
thought that of all sublunary things knowledge was the best ; 
she desired first to learn all sciences, and then proposed to found 
a college of learned women in which she would preside." Spen- 
ser's Faerie Queene, book v., cantos iv.-vi., has also been placed 
in comparison with The Princess^ as an illustration of the same 
general theme. The obligations of the poem to other authors for 
beauty of detail are noticed below. 



APPENDIX 133 

II. 

The "Weird Seizures." 

The very important change in the form by the introduction of 
this element of illusion has been much commented upon by critics 
and editors. It must be granted that the gain was considerable ; 
the prince was not a hero, but only a lover ; and his character as 
a lover is not weakened, but rather strengthened, by ascribing to 
him the "affection of the house," especially as this is presented 
less as a physical disease than as the state of vision and faintness 
traditionally associated with the lovers of romance ; his figure gath- 
ers both pathos and glamor, and evokes greater sympathy through 
the device ; secondly, by this means an atmosphere of dream- 
land and unreality is diffused from time to time through the 
whole story and relieves materially the weakness of the machinery 
of the narrative, which, taken too literally, is always in danger 
of becoming farcical and degenerating into opera-houffe effects; 
thirdly, there is a continuous suggestion that the true illusion 
is the theory of life exemplified in the Princess and her school, 
and the true cure — the return to reality — is the love-match which 
makes the lovers whole in their united selves. Such indefinable 
suggestion as is indicated by these statements is of the essence 
of poetic art, and not less real because it escapes observation in 
detail. On the whole, the "weird seizures" seem to aid in real- 
izing the temperament of the Prince, in giving definition to his 
vague life (for, so far as he is seen, he is without any true experi- 
ence in action or thought — he has never done anything), and also 
in fusing the whole matter of the poem and reducing its 
"medley" to a common tone of feeling. 

The thought itself, the Shadow-idea, is fundamental in Tenny- 
son ; it is persistent in all his work, it falls in with his own 
nature, and it has a basis in his own personality. He relates his 
experience in The Ancient Sage : 

" And more, my Son ! for more than once when I 
Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
The word that is the symbol of myself, 
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
And past into the Nameless, as a cloud 
Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs 



134 APPENDIX 

Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt;. 
But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self 
The gain of such large life as match'd with ours, 
Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words, 
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. " 

This is a leaf of autobiography, and records the time when, 
repeating the name "Tennyson" over and over, he would fall 
into tins shadow-state, which, it should be noted, is here described 
as a state of higher reality. He once described it in a letter : 
"I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a 
kind of waking trance (this for lack of a better name) I have fre- 
quently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. 
This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to 
myself silently, till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of 
the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed 
to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a 
confused state, but the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly 
beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, 
the loss of personality, if so it were, seeming no extinction but 
only the true life " (Tennyson to , May 7, 1874, quoted in Wal- 
ter's In Tennyson Land, 1890, p. 38). A similar experience is 
told by Wordsworth of his own boyhood. Some critics have gone 
so far as to point to the precise epoch of Tennyson's poetic art, 
when this sense of the shadow, as the state of lower reality set 
forth in The Princess, passed away, and they draw a dividing 
line between the earlier dreamier work of the poet and his 
later masculine power, using The Lady of Shalott as the point of 
departure. 

** *I am half-sick of shadows,' said 
The Lady of Shalott." 

This may be pressing the matter too far; but anyone who 
chooses may find a hundred recurrences of the shadow-idea in 
Tennyson's work, marked enough to characterize his genius 
among poets, and therefore likely to have had a basis in his 
nature. The trait proceeds, of course, from the excess of his 
imaginative power. 



APPENDIX 135 

III. 

The Songs. 

The introduction of the Songs cannot be described as an 
afterthought, since Tennyson says they were in his mind as an 
expedient from the first ; but he did not employ them till the 
third edition. They stand apart from the poem in form, but 
they are an essential part of the structure of the whole, and are 
used to bind together and enforce the moral meaning. It has 
been remarked in the Introduction that the Child is an impor- 
tant character in the narrative, and its influence predominant in 
determining or manifesting the action at critical points. Now 
the Songs are, in great part, the Child in another form ; and 
their purpose is to keep the element of childhood, as a 
power in the mature life of men and women naturally developed, 
clearly before the mind. The first Song is one of reconciliation 
of husband and wife over the grave of their child ; the second is 
a cradle-song ; the third reverts to love, which is thought of as ! 
the medium through which soul echoes to soul, — perhaps, as hasj 
been suggested, with a thought of "from generation to genera- i 
tion," though this does not seem to me contained in the words ; i 
the fourth represente the memory of wife and child as the source 
of the soldier's courage ; the fifth, in response, represents the child 
as the source of the mother's courage in widowhood ; the sixth 
shows the triumph of love in the maiden who yields to the 
greatest of all world forces, as love is there described. The six, 
taken together, constitute one main argument of the poem, and, 
with the lyrics and idyls and the exalted description of mother- 
hood in the seventh part, mark the highest reach of the poem 
both in wisdom and in poetic art. 

The Songs, taken separately, require but little annotation. Their 
simplicity, directness, and power, which make them unsurpassed 
among Tennyson's lyrics, are the very ground of their excellence. 
On the historical side, however, it may be remarked that the 
Bugle-Song was suggested by hearing the bugle blown on Lake 
Killarney to awake the echoes of the mountains ; and the fifth, 
" Home they brought her warrior dead," may be a development 
of an Anglo-Saxon poem, Oudrun. Other versions of the fourth 
and fifth Songs are as follows : 



136 APPENDIX 



IV. 



Lady, let the rolling drums, 
Beat to battle where thy warrior stands ; 

Now thy face across his fancy comes, 
And gives the battle to his hands. 

Lady, let the trumpets blow, 

Clasp thy little babes about thy knee ; 

Now their warrior father meets the foe, 
And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 

V. 

Home they brought him slain with spears, 
They brought him home at even-fall; 

All alone she sits and hears 
Echoes in the empty hall. 
Sounding on the morrow. 

The sun peeped in from open field, 

The boy began to leap and prance, 
Rode upon his father's lance, 

Beat upon his father's shield ; 
" Oh, hush, my joy, my sorrow." 

It is easy to show how much is gained by the simpler and more 
direct expression in the versions finally adopted. The comparison 
may be made a lesson in poetic style. 

A word may be added with regard to other short poems intro- 
duced into the narrative itself. The best known of them, 
" Tears, idle tears," has its prophecy in the earlier lines, " O sad 
No More," and represents a real experience, an outburst of emo- 
tion; it was suggested, Tennyson said, by Tintern Abbey; it is 
remarkable for the music, which is so smooth that the rhyme is 
not missed; and, in English poetry, it has a place among the 
perfect lyrics of the language. Similarly, the idyl, ' ' Come 
down, O Maid," is of flawless workmanship, but is equally flaw- 
less in its substance, and is a marvel of landscape subdued to be 
itself the expression of human thouglit and emotion, and so 
charged with the poet's mood that one cannot divide the spiritual 
from the external beauty; the development of the poem, the 
sweetness of its argument, the subtlety of its unspoken sugges- 
tion, the rising rhythm and climax of human appeal falling away 



APPENDIX 137 

in the natural images and wonderful verbal melody of the con- 
clusion, are traits rather to be felt than analyzed, though they 
lose nothing by such analysis. It is the most perfect short idyl 
in English poetry, and though its literary origin is Greek and its 
earthly scenery is Swiss, it seems native in every syllable, because 
it speaks from the common heart of man. The " Swallow- 
Song," and "Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white" 
(with its pure and lovely simile of the lily — the most delicately 
perfect in the entire poem), are lighter and obviously artificial in 
structure, as is also the prophetess song of the Princess, noble 
and resounding as it is, and with the true touch of scriptural 
sublimity; but these also are, each in its kind, unsurpassed 
poems. If the student learns to appreciate these, together with 
the other highly wrought passages of the narrative, he will have 
received a lesson in the perception of refined beauty in imagery, 
delicacy of sentiment, and the power of words to express true 
emotion nobly, though without deep passion, such as could be 
derived from no other poet. 

ly. 

Parallel Passages. 

The study of parallelisms in poetry, like that of variant read- 
ings, belongs to advanced work, and little attention has been 
directed to them in the body of the Notes. Since, however, 
some may miss them and desire them, a table is here given of 
such parallelisms as have been pointed out by one and another 
editor, nearly all of which are contained in J. Churton Collinses 
Illustrations of Tennyson^ 1891. It was formerly the custom of poets 
to "take their own" wherever they found it, and the classics are 
still used as sources of phrase and style, without explicit acknowl- 
edgment. Tennyson was thoroughly acquainted with poetic 
literature, and had been formed by it; his works are full of 
translations, adaptations, and echoes of his forerunners; but, in 
fact, he was as original as any of the great poets of culture, and 
he explicitly denied the seeming obligation he was under in 
several instances that had been pointed out in this poem before 
his death. In his interesting letter to Dawson, Nov. 21, 1882, 
in regard to the latter's edition of The Princess, he wrote as 
follows: "I do not object to your finding parallelisms. They 



138 APPENDIX 

must always recur. A man (a Chinese scholar) some time ago 
wrote to me, saying, that in an unknown untranslated Chinese 
poem there were two whole lines of mine almost word for word. 
Wliy not ? Are not human eyes all over the world looking at the 
same objects and must there not consequently be coincidences of 
thought and impressions and expressions ? It is scarcely possible 
for any one to say or write anything in this late time of the 
WQrld to which, in the rest of the literature of the world, a par- 
allel could not somewhere be found. But when you say that this 
passage or that was suggested by Wordsworth or Shelley or 
another, I demur, and more, I wholly disagree." He goes on 
and instances in particular the parallelism of tlie water-lily in 
Wordsworth and of the south wind in Shelley, and gives his own 
note as follows: " Water-lilies in my own pond, seen on a gusty 
day with my own eyes. They did start and slide in the sudden 
puffs of wind, till caught and stayed by the tether of their own 
stalks — quite as true as Wordsworth's simile, and more in detail. 
. . . I was walking in the New Forest. A wind did arise 
and — 

* Shake the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 
Of the wild wood together.' 

The wind, I believe, was a west wind, but because I wished 
the Prince to go south I turned the wind to the south, and, 
naturally, the wind said, 'Follow.' I believe the resemblance 
that you note is just a chance one. Shelley's lines are not 
familiar to me, though, of course, if they occur in the Prome- 
theus I must have read them." These notes of the poet's are of 
interest as showing how he worked from the realities of ear and 
eye. To close the list of such origins, so far as known, the 
" full sea glazed with muffled moonlight " (I., 244) was at Torquay ; 
the " black cloud drag inward " (VII., 23) was seen from Snowdon ; 
and Rolfe quotes from Clough's Letters that the "stately pine" 
(V. , 336) was in the Valley of the Cauterets, The list of the parallel 
passages is as follows ; but cross references to Tennyson's other 
works, passages merely illustrative of the use of single words 
(such as may readily be found by consulting concordances of the 
poets), and references already made in the foot-notes are ex- 
cluded : 

I., 65. Homer, Iliad, iv., 513. 

96, Shelley, Prometheus Unhound^ ii., 1. 



APPENDIX 139 

114. Shelley, Prince Athanase, ii., 86. 
233. Homer, Iliad, ii., 147, 148. 
II., 8. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, vi., 21. 
94. Homer, Iliad, vi., 401. 
100 et seq. Prior, Alma, i., 891 et seq. 
168. Dante, La Divina Commedia, Inferno, vii., 13, 14. 
251. Vergil, uFlneid, vii., 483-504. 
Song. Theocritus, xxiv., 7-9. 

III., 98. Theocritus, ix., 31 ; x., 30 ; Vergil, Eclogae, ii., 63. 
106. Shelley, EpipsycTiidion, 446. 
313. Wordsworth, Yew Trees. 
324. Pindar, Olympia, ii., 123-136. 
IV., 34. Leigh Hunt, Hero and Leander, ii., 103, 104. 
36. Moschus, iii., 69, 70. 
85. Shakspere, Venus and Adonis, 1185. 
93. Shakspere, Twelfth Night, I., v., 287-295. 
101. Homer, Odyssey, xx., 347; Horace, Sat., II., iii., 72. 
163. Shakspere, Julius Ccesar, I., ii., 105. 
236. Wordsworth, The Excursion, V., 564-566. 
V. 252. Homer, Iliad, v., 5. 
336. Vergil, ^neld, ii., 441. 
513. Lucau, Pharsalia, i., 152-158. 
Song. Thorpe, Edda of Smmund the Learned, 89-91. 

Couybeare, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, xlii. 
Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, I., ix. 

VI. 234. Shakspere, As TouLihelt, I., iii., 65-72; A Midsummer 

NighVs Dream, III., ii., 198-214. 

VII. 20. Homer, Iliad, iv., 275; Lucretius, vi., 256. 
196. Theocritus, xi., 43. 

203. Theocritus, viii., 76, 77. 
206. Vergil, Eclogae, i., 58. 



140 APPENDIX 

V. 

Examinations. 

An examination-paper can easily be set upon the text of 
The Princess, such as will test adequately the student's under- 
standing of its language, allusions, and imagery, by requiring brief 
and clear comment uj^on selected passages in the ordinary way ; 
and quite as readily questions can be framed to show his com- 
prehension of the general sense of the poem by following the 
' ' Introduction " paragraph by paragraph. For the usual purposes 
of an examination such an outline knowledge as would be thus 
demanded might be sufficient ; but the credit of passing well 
might then be won without the aid of any appreciation of the 
literary value of the work. The difficulty here illustrated, of 
either testing growth in taste or making it surely count in the 
result, has given currency to the educational commonplace that 
examinations cannot be set upon literature. Whether this be a 
true or false opinion, the following suggestions are made, rather 
to indicate in what way a literary appreciation may be brought to 
bear in meeting an examination than how an examination may be 
brought to bear on a literary appreciation. 

If a student is to exercise his faculties upon such a poem as 
The Princess^ the Introduction must be taken for what it is — a 
guide only, not an analysis to be memorized. Its successive 
subdivisions should be more fully treated and carried out more 
comprehensively into details ; thus the plot, characters, situations, 
incidents, and argument can be made thoroughly known to the 
student, and further analysis can be made by him after the 
analogies and on the guiding lines there laid down. For 
example, there is hardly one of the minor characters that could 
not profitably be studied by an interested student with a view to 
understanding just what the character is and the particular ways 
in which its traits are made plain to the reader ; in the case of 
the leading characters similar work, with a view to further 
illustration, could be done ; or, in the single point of Tennyson's 
landscape effects, a comparison of several of them, an inquiry 
as to which of them include motion as an important part of 
the picture, and other questions tending to lead the student to 
mind the detail and the composition and to discriminate one 
sort of picture from another, — these are all several ways of 



APPENDIX 141 

enforcing literary observation — alertness, and precision of mind 
in reading — which is of as much value and is as necessary as 
is the habit of scientific observation, and perhaps even more, 
inasmuch as the faculty is rarer. But not to go into too long 
a catalogue of what is possible, the suggestion is that the sub- 
divisions of the Introduction be regarded as a list of special 
topics for further criticism in the same line. It might even 
be desirable to make some of these topics subjects of short 
essays by different members of the class as a means of accumu- 
lating in the minds of all a sufficient body of criticism and of 
habituating them to such methods of reflection and channels 
of expression. The kind and yielding aspects of the old king, 
the Prince's father, might thus be made prominent, and both 
Gama and Lady Blanche would disclose more vitality if their 
lives were more intently examined. In the case of so many- 
sided and involved a composition as The Princess, it might be 
well, and in fact it is only just, that a student should know 
veiy clearly the lines which his analysis, criticism, or summaiy 
should take on examination ; it is too much to expect that he 
should formulate such matters for the first time in an impromptu, 
not to say a reportorial, way ; and a good deal of preparation in 
the narration of parts of the plot in full (so much of the preceding 
portion always being told as will make the situation compre- 
hensible), in the description of scenes, in character-study (the 
particular actions which exhibit and prove the character being 
clearly stated), in the artistic use of the landscape and other 
accessories, in the moods even of the poet toward his creations, 
and in the principles he sets forth, — a good deal of all this can 
be accomplished in the class-room by a well-directed and intelli- 
gently distributed, but not too laborious, series of little original 
studies. After such preparation, possibly some such questions as 
these might be put, and in answering them it would be well, if it 
were not thought too radical, to let the students have free use of 
their texts. 

1. Give an account of the tournament, and in your stoiy explain 
(a), why it was fought ; (5), what were the terms ? (c), the course 
of events in the fight ; {d). the state of the Prince; {e), the defeat 
of the Princess in triumph. 

2. On what two principal occasions did the Prince act, as a man 
should, in deeds ? On what occasions did the Princess require 



142 APPENDIX 

such aid, in extreme peril, as only a man could give ? Did she in 
any of them recognize woman's natural dependence ? Had she 
ever felt herself either alone, or inferior in power before the night 
when her palace was surrounded ? Can you enumerate in suc- 
cession the climax of shocks that overwhelmed her belief in her- 
self ? Did she find by events that woman is as dependent on man 
for love as for protection ? Was the college on the point of failure 
when the trouble arose ? if so, why ? 

3. Did Lady Blanche show any affection for any one ? Did 
Melissa show any attachment to her mother ? In what way was 
Florian useful as a friend ? Characterize Gama from what is told 
of his doings at court, from his deeds to his children and their 
attitude toward him, and from his words to the Prince, and finally 
to the Princess. 

4. What are the burlesque elements in the poem ? What are 
the beautiful elements, exclusive of the characters and the senti- 
ment ? Illustrate from some one example («), Tennyson's exact- 
ness of description of small natural objects ; (J), fitness of simile; 
(c), fitness of metaphor ; (fZ), beauty of single lines ; (e), fondness 
for unusual color effects. Which of the songs do you like best, 
and why ? What scientific knowledge, if any, interested you in 
the poem ? Why did Tennyson introduce so large an element of 
such knowledge ? What was the object of Sir Walter Vivian's 
picnic ? 

Such are some of the questions in detail that may be suggested, 
not primarily as means toward passing a collegiate examination, 
but for the purpose of ensuring that literary predisposition of 
the student's mind, in its attitude to The Princess, which will 
enforce his answering any collegiate paper from the literary point 
of view or none at all. In addition to these, it is, of course, 
necessary that the student should be able to answer the more 
obvious and fundamental questions, indicated in the opening 
paragraph of this note, upon Tennyson's artistic method, his 
composite, cumulative, and pictorial style, upon the structure of 
the plot, the significance of the child, the general course of the 
argument, and, in brief, all that is contained in the Introduc- 
tion, as a basis for the original work indicated in the set 
questions above. 



Longmans' English Classics 



Books prescribed for 1897 Examinations, p. 2. 

Books prescribed for 1898 Examinations, p. 3. 

Books prescribed for 1899 Examinations, p. 5. 

Books prescribed for 1900 Examinations, p. 6, 

Other Volumes in the Series, - - p. 7. 



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Shakspere's As You Like It. With an introduction by Barrett 
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FOR STUDY. 

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Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, 
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De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited, with intro- 
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'Books Prescribed for the i8gg Examinations, 

Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXII., and XXIV. 
Edited, with introduction and notes, by William H. Maxwell, 
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Training High School, Brooklyn. With Portrait of Pope. 

Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Edited, with introduction 
and notes, by James W. Bright, Ph.D., Professor of English 
Philology in Johns Hopkins University. [Preparitig. 

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, from "The Spectator." 
Edited, with introduction and notes, by D. O. S. Lowell, A.M., 
of the Roxbury Latin School, Roxbury, Mass. With Portrait 
of Addison. 

Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Edited, with intro- 
duction and notes, by Mary A. Jordan, A.M., Professor of 
Rhetoric and Old English in Smith College. With Portrait of 
Goldsmith. 

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Edited, 
with introduction and notes, by Herbert Bates, A.B., Instructor 
in English in the University of Nebraska. With Portrait of 
Coleridge. 

De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited, with intro- 
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in Rhetoric in Yale University. With Portrait of De Quincey. 

Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. With introduction and 
explanatory notes, by Charles F. Richardson, Ph.D., Winkley 
Professor of the English Language and Literature in Dart- 
mouth College. [In preparation. 

FOR STUDY. 

Shakspere's Macbeth. Edited, with introduction and notes, 
by John Matthews Manly, Ph.D., Professor of the English 
Language in Brown University. With Portrait of Shakspere. 

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6 LONGMANS* ENGLISH CLASSICS 

Books Prescribed for i8gg — Continued. 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, 
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Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Edited, with introduction and 
notes, by Wilson Farrand, A.M., Associate Principal of the 
Newark Academy, Newark, N. J. With Portrait of Burns. 

Books Prescribed for the igoo Examinations, 

{See also Precediyig Lists.) 
FOR READING. 

Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Edited by Professor J. W. 

Bright. 
Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books L, VI., XXII., and XXIV. 

Edited by Superintendent Maxwell and Percival Chubb. 
The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Edited by Dr. D. O. S. 

Lowell. 
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Edited by Professor 

Mary A. Jordan. 
De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited by Dr. C. 

S. Baldwin. 
Tennyson's The Princess. Edited by Professor G. E. Wood- 
berry. 
Scott's Ivanhoe. Edited by Professor Bliss Perry, of Princeton 

University. [In preparation. 

Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Edited by Professor 

Charles F. Richardson. \In preparation. 

FOR STUDY. 

Shakspere's Macbeth. Edited by Professor Manly. 

Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I. and II. Edited by Pro- 
fessor E. E. Hale, Jr. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited by 
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Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison. Edited by 
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Shakspere's a Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited, with 
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10 LONGMANS' ENCLISIT CLASSICS 

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Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.* 

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Milton's • L' Allegro, II Penseroso, etc' 

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the subject matter,- makes the introductions and notes of more than usual 
interest and profit ; and I think that it is just such editing as this that 
our younger students need in approaching the works of the great poets." 
— J. Russell Hayes, Assistant Professor of English, Swarthmore 
College, Pa. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



It has been the aim of the publishers to secure editors 
of high reputation for scholarship, experience, and skill, 
and to provide a series thoroughly adapted, by uniformity 
of plan and thoroughness of execution, to present educa- 
tional needs. The chief distinguishing features of the 
series are the following : 

I. Each volume contains full "Suggestions for Teach- 
ers and Students," with bibliographies, and, in many 
cases, lists of topics recommended for further reading or 
study, subjects for themes and compositions, specimen 
examination papers, etc. It is therefore hoped that the 
series will contribute largely to the working out of sound 
methods in teaching English. 

2. The works prescribed for reading are treated, in every 
case, as literature, not as texts for narrow linguistic study, 
and edited with a view to interesting the student in the 
book in question both in itself and as representative of a 
literary type or of a period of literature, and of leading 
him on to read other standard works of the same age or 
kind understandingly and appreciatively. 

3. These editions are not issued anonymously, nor are 
they hackwork, — the result of mere compilation. They 
are the original work of scholars and men of letters who 
are conversant with the topics of which they treat. 

4. Colleges and preparatory schools are both repre- 
sented in the list of editors (the preparatory schools more 
prominently in the lists for 1897 and 1898), and it is in- 
tended that the series shall exemplify the ripest methods 
of American scholars for the teaching of English — the 
result in some cases of years of actual experience in 
secondary school work, and, in others, the formulation of 
the experience acquired by professors who observe care- 
fully the needs of students who present themselves for 
admission to college. 

5. The volumes are uniform in size and style, are well 
printed and bound, and constitute a well-edited set of 
standard works, fit for permanent use and possession — a 
nucleus for a library of English literature. 



LONGMAN'S, GREEN, &> CO.' S PUBLICATIONS. 



EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. have the pleasure to state 
that they are now publishing a short series of books treating of the history 
of America, under the general title Epochs of American History. The 
series is under the editorship of Dr. ALBERT Bushnell Hart, Assistant 
Professor of History in Harvard College, who has also prepared all the maps 
for the several volumes. Each volume contains about 300 pages, similar in 
size and style to the page of the volumes in Messrs. Longmans' series, 
* Epochs of Modern History, ' with full marginal analysis, working bibliogra- 
phies, maps, and index. The volumes are issued separately, and each is 
complete in itself. The volumes now ready provide a continuous history 
of the United States from the foundation of the Colonies to the present 
time, suited to and intended for class use as well as for general reading and 
reference. 

*^* The volumes of this series already issued have been adopted for use as text- 
books in nearly all the leading Colleges and in many Normal Schools and other 
institutions. A prospectus, showing Contents and scope of each volume, specimen 
pages, etc. , will bt sent on application to the Publishers. 



1. THE COLONIES, 1492-1750. 

By Reuben Gold Thwaites, Secretary of the State Historical Society of 
Wisconsin ; author of " Historic Waterways," etc. With four colored 
maps. pp. xviii.-30i. Cloth. $1.25, 

CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 

*' I beg leave to acknowledge your courtesy in sending me a copy of the first 
volume in the series of ' Epochs of American History,' which I have read with 
great interest and satisfaction. I am pleased, as everyone must be, with the 
mechanical execution of the book, with the maps, and with the fresh and valua- 
ble 'Suggestions' and 'References.' .... The work itself appears to 
me to be quite remarkable for its comprehensiveness, and it presents a vast 
array of subjects in a way that is admirably fair, clear and orderly." — Professor 
Moses Coit Tyler, Ithaca, N. Y. 

WILLIAMS COLLEGE. 
•• It is just the book needed for college students, not too brief to be uninter- 
esting, admirable in its plan, and well furnished with references to accessible 
authorities."— Professor Richard A. Rice, Williamstown, Mass. 

VASSAR COLLEGE. 

" Perhaps the best recommendation of ' Thwaites' American Colonies ' is 
the fact that the day after it was received I ordered copies for class-room use. 
The book is admirable." — Professor Lucy M. Salmon, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 

*' All that could be desired. This volume is more like a fair treatment of the 
whole subject of the colonies than any work of the sort yet produced.'' 

— The Critic. 

" The subject is virtually a fresh one as approached by Mr. Thwaites. It is 
a pleasure to call especial attention to some most helpful bibliographical notes 
provided at the head of each chapter''— 7%^ Nation. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, &" CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

II. FORMATION OF THE UNION, 1750-1829. 

By Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History in 
Harvard University, Member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
Author of '* Introduction to the Study of Federal Government," 
"Epoch Maps," etc. With five colored maps. pp. XX.-278. Cloth. 
$1.25. 

The second volume of the Epochs of American History aims to follow 
out the principles laid down for "The Colonies," — the study of causes 
rather than of events, the development of the American nation out of scattered 
and inharmonious colonies. The throwing off of English control, the growth 
out of narrow political conditions, the struggle against foreign domination, and 
the extension of popular government, are all parts of the uninterrupted process 
of the Formation of the Union. 

LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY. 

" The large and sweeping treatment of the subject, which shows the true re- 
lations of the events preceding and following the revolution, to the revolution 
itself, is a real addition to the literature of the subject ; while the bibliography 
prefixed to each chapter, adds incalculably to the value of the work." — Mary 
Sheldon Barnes, Palo Alto, Cal. 

" It is a careful and conscientious study of the period and its events, and 
should find a place among the text-books of our public schools." 

— Boston Transcript. 

" Professor Hart has compressed a vast deal of information into his volume, 
and makes many things most clear and striking. His maps, showing the terri- 
torial growth of the United States, are extremely interesting." 

— A^ew York Times. 

" . . The causes of the Revolution are clearly and cleverly condensed into 
a few pages. . . The maps in the work are singularly useful even to adults. 
There are five of these, which are alone worth the price of the volume," 

— Magazine of American History. 

"The formation period of our nation is treated with much care and with 
great precision. Each chapter is prefaced with copious references to authori- 
ties, which are valuable to the student who desires to pursue his reading more 
extensively. There are five valuable maps showing the growth of our country 
by successive stages and repeated acquisition of territory." 

— Boston Advertiser. 

" Dr. Hart is not only a master of the art of condensation, ... he is 
what is even of greater importance, an interpreter of history. He perceives 
the logic of historic events ; hence, in his condensation, he does not neglect 
proportion, and more than once he gives the student valuable clues to the 
solution of historical problems." — Atlantic Monthly. 

" A valuable volume of a valuable series. The author has written with a 
full knowledge of his subject, and we have little to say except in praise." 

— English Historical Review, 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO.'S rUBLTCATTONS. 



EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 



III. DIVISION AND RE-UNION, 1829-1889. 

By WooDROW Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Jurisprudence in 

Princeton College ; Author of "Congressional Government," "The 

State — Elements of Historical and Practical Politics," etc., etc. With 

five colored Maps. 346 pages. Cloth, $1.25. 

"We regret that we have not space for more quotations from this uncom- 
monly strong, impartial, interesting book. Giving only enough facts to 
elucidate the matter discussed, it omits no important questions. It furnishes 
the reader clear-cut views of the right and the wrong of them all. It gives ad- 
mirable pen-portraits of the great personages of the period with as much free- 
dom from bias, and as much pains to be just, as if the author were delineating 
Pericles, or Alcibiades, Sulla, or Cassar. Dr. Wilson has earned the gratitude of 
seekers after truth by his masterly production." — N. C. University Magazine. 

" This admirable little volume is one of the few books which nearly meet our 
ideal of history. It is causal history in the truest sense, tracing the workings of 
latent influences and far-reaching conditions of their outcome in striking fact, 
yet the whole current of events is kept in view, and the great personalities of 
the time, the nerve-centers of history, live intensely and in due proportion in 
these pages. We do not know the equal of this book for a brief and trust- 
worthy, and, at the same time, a brilliantly written and sufficient history of these 
sixty years. We heartily commend it, not only for general reading, but as an 
admirable text-book." — Post-Graduate and Wooster Quarterly. 

" Considered as a general history of the United States from 1829 to 1889, 
his book is marked by excellent sense of proportion, extensive knowledge, im- 
partiality of judgment, unusual power of summarizing, and an acute pohtical 
sense. Few writers can more vividly set forth the views of parties." 

— Atlantic Monthly. 

" Students of United States history may thank Mr. Wilson for an extreme- 
ly clear and careful rendering of a period very difficult to handle . . . they 
will find themselves materially aided in easy comprehension of the pohtical 
situation of the country by the excellent maps." — N. Y Times. 

" Professor Wilson writes in a clear and forcible style. . . . The bibli- 
ographical references at the head of each chapter are both well selected and 
well arranged, and add greatly to the value of the work, which appears to be 
especially designed for use in instruction in colleges and preparatory schools." 

— Vale Review. 

" It is written in a style admirably clear, vigorous, and attractive, a thorough 
grasp of the subject is shown, and the development of the theme is lucid and 
orderly, while the tone is judicial and fair, and the deductions sensible and 
dispassionate— so far as we can see, ... It would be difficult to construct 
a better manual of the subject than this, and it adds greatly to the value of this 
useful i,GX\cs.'"—Hart/ord Courant. 

". . . One of the most valuable historical works that has appeared in 
many years. The delicate period of our country's history, with which this 
work is largely taken up, is treated by the author with an irapartiahty that is 
almost unique." — Columbia Law Times. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, &- CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

ENGLISH HISTORY FOR AMERICANS. 

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Author of "Young Folks' His- 
tory of the United States," etc., and Edward Channing, Assistant 
Professor of History in Harvard University. With 77 Illustrations, 6 
Colored Maps, Bibliography, a Chronological Table of Contents, and 
Index. i2mo. Pp. xxxii-334. Teachers' price, $1.20. 

The name " English History for Americans," which suggests the key-note of 
this book, is based on the simple fact that it is not the practice of American 
readers, old or young, to give to English history more than a limited portion of 
their hours of study. ... It seems clear that such readers will use their 
time to the best advantage if they devote it mainly to those events in English 
annals which have had the most direct influence on the history and institutions 
of their own land, . . . The authors of this book have therefore boldly 
ventured to modify in their narrative the accustomed scale of proportion ; while 
it has been their wish, in the treatment of every detail, to accept the best re- 
sult of modern English investigation, and especially to avoid all unfair or 
one-sided judgments. . . . Extracts Jrom Author's Preface. 

DR. W. T. HARRIS, U. S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. 

" I take great pleasure in acknowledging the receipt of the book, and be- 
lieve it to be the best introduction to English history hitherto made for the use 
of schools. It is just what is needed in the school and in the family. It is the 
first history of England that I have seen which gives proper attention to socio- 
logy and the evolution of political ideas, without neglecting what is picturesque 
and interesting to the popular taste. The device of placing the four historical 
maps at the beginning and end deserves special mention for its convenience. 
Allow me to congratulate you on the publication of so excellent a text-book.'* 

ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL. 

*' . . . The most noticeable and commendable feature in the book seems 
to be its Unity. ... I felt the same reluctance to lay the volume down 
, . . that one experiences in reading a great play or a well-constructed 
novel. Several things besides the unity conspire thus seductively to lead the 
reader on. The page is open and attractive, the chapters are short, the type 
is large and clear, the pictures are well chosen and significant, a surprising 
number of anecdotes told in a crisp and masterful manner throw valuable side- 
lights on the main narrative ; the philosophy of history is undeniably there, but 
sugar-coated, and the graceful style would do credit to a Macaulay. I shall 
immediately recommend it for use in our school," — Dr. D. O. S. Lowell. 

LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL. 

"In answer to your note of February 23d I beg to say that we have intro- 
duced your Higginson's English History into our graduating class and are 
much pleased with it. Therefore whatever endorsement I, as a member of the 
Committee of Ten, could give the book has already been given by my action 
in placing it in our classes." — James C. Mackenzie, Lawrence ville, N. J. 

ANN ARBOR HIGH SCHOOL. 

*' It seems to me the book will do for English history in this country what 
the 'Young Folks' History of the United States ' has done for the history of our 
own country — and I consider this high praise." 

— T. G. Pattengill, Ann Arbor, Mich. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York* 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from 
the Earliest Times to 1885. 

By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of All Souls 
College, Oxford, etc.; Author of "The History of England from the 
Accession of James I. to 1642," etc. Illustrated under the superintend- 
ence of Mr. W. H. St. John Hope, Assistant Secretary of the Society 
of Antiquaries, and with the assistance in the choice of Portraits of 
Mr. George Scharf, C.B., F.S.A., who is recognized as the highest 
authority on the subject. In one Volume, with 378 Illustrations and 
full Index. Crown 8vo, cloth, plain, $3.00. 

The book is also published in three Volumes {each xvith Index and 
Table of Contents) as follows : 

VOLUME I.— B.C. 55-A.D. 1509. 410 pp. With 173 Illustrations and Index. 

Crown 8vo, $1.20. 
VOLUME II.— A.D. 1509-1689. 332 pp. With 96 Illustrations and Index. 

Crown Svo, $1.20. 
VOLUME III.— A.D. 1689-1885. 374 pp. With 109 Illustrations and Index. 

Crown 8vo, $1.20. 

V Gardiner's "Student's History of England," through Part IX. (to 
1789), is recommended by HARVARD UNIVERSITY as indicating the 
requirements for admission in this subject ; and the ENTIRE work is mada 
the basis for English history study in the University. 

YALE UNIVERSITY. 

"Gardiner's 'Student's History of England' seems to me an admirable 
short history.'' — Prof. C. H. Smith, New Haven, Conn. 

TRINITY COLLEGE, HARTFORD. 
" It is, in my opinion, by far the best advanced school history of England 
that I have ever seen. It is clear, concise, and scientific, and, at the same time, 
attractive and interesting. The illustrations are very good and a valuable 
addition to the book, as they are not mere pretty pictures, but of real historical 
and archaeological interest." — Prof, Henry Ferguson. 

"A unique feature consists of the very numerous illustrations. They 
throw light on almost every phase of English life in all ages. . . . Never, 
perhaps, in such a treatise has pictorial illustration been used with so good 
effect. The alert teacher will find here ample material for useful lessons by 
leading the pupil to draw the proper inferences and make the proper interpre- 
tations and comparisons. . . . The style is compact, vigorous, and inter- 
esting. There is no lack of precision ; and, in the selection of the details, the 
hand of the scholar thoroughly conversant with the source and with the results 
of recent criticism is plainly revealed." — The Nation, N. Y. 

" . . . It is illustrated by pictures of real value ; and when accompanied 
by the companion ' Atlas of English History' is all that need be desired for its 
special purpose." — The Churchman, N. Y. 

"'**^ prospectus and specimen pages of Gardiner'' s '* Studenfs History 
of England'''' will be sent free on application to the publishers. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91 and 93 Fifth Ave., New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, &^ CO: S PUBLICATIONS, 
LONGMANS' SCHOOL GRAMMAR. 

By David Salmon. Part I., Parts of Speech ; Part II., Classific-ation 

and Inflection ; Part III., Analysis of Sentences ; Part IV., History 

and Derivation. With Notes for Teachers and Index. New Edition, 

Revised. With Preface by E. A. Allen, Professor of English in the 

University of Missouri. i2mo. 272 pages. 75 cents. 

•« . , . One of the best working grammars we have ever seen, and this 
applies to all its parts. It is excellently arranged and perfectly graded. Part 
IV., on History and Derivation, is as beautiful and interesting as it is valuable 
—but this might be said of the whole book."— New York Teacher. 

" The Grammar deserves to supersede all others with which we are ac- 
quainted." — N. Y. Nation, July 2, 1891. 

PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION. 

It seems to be generally conceded that English grammar is worse taught 
and less understood than any other subject in the school course. This is, 
doubtless, largely due to the kind of text-books used, which, for the most part, 
require methods that violate the laws of pedagogy as well as of language. 
There are, however, two or three English grammars that are admirable com- 
mentaries on the facts of the language, but, written from the point of view of 
the scholar rather than of the learner, they fail to awaken any interest in the 
subject, and hence are not serviceable for the class-room. 

My attention was first called to Longmans' School Grammar by a favorable 
notice of it in the Nation. In hope of finding an answer to the inquiry of 
numerous teachers for " the best school grammar," I sent to the Publishers for 
a copy. An examination of the work, so far from resulting in the usual dis- 
appointment, left the impression that a successful text-book in a field strewn 
with failures had at last been produced. For the practical test of the class- 
room, I placed it in the hands of an accomplished grammarian, who had tried 
several of the best grammars published, and he declares the results to be most 
satisfactory. 

The author's simplicity of method, the clear statement of facts, the orderly 
arrangement, the wise restraint, manifest on every page, reveal the scholar and 
practical teacher. No one who had not mastered the language in its early his- 
torical development could have prepared a school grammar so free from sense- 
less rules and endless details. The most striking feature, minimnm of precept, 
maximum of example, will commend itself to all teachers who follow rational 
methods. In this edition, the Publishers have adapted the illustrative sentences 
to the ready comprehension of American pupils, and I take pleasure in recom- 
mending the book, in behalf of our mother tongue, to the teachers of our Pub- 
lic and Private Schools. 

EDViTARD A AlLKN. 

University of Missouri, May, 1891. 

MR. HALE's school, BOSTON. 

" I have used your Grammar and Composition during the last year in my 
school, and like them both very much indeed. They are the best books of the 
kind I have ever seen, and supply a want I have felt for a good many years."— 
Albert Halb, Boston, Mass. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York, 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ COr S PUBLICATIONS. 

LONGMANS' SCHOOL Q^^hMMKK.^O PINIONS, 
girls' high school, boston, mass. 

*' When you put Longmans' School Grammar in my hands, some year or 
two ago, I used it a little while with a boy of nine years, with perfect satisfac 
tion and approval. The exigencies of the boy's school arrangements inter^ 
cepted that course in grammar and caused the book to be laid aside. To-day 
I have taken the book and have examined it all, from cover to cover. It i^ 
simply a perfect grammar. Its beginnings are made with utmost gentleness 
and reasonableness, and it goes at least quite as far as in any portion of our 
pubhc schools course it is, for the present, desirable to think of going. The 
author has adjusted his book to the very best conceivable methods of teaching, 
and goes hand in hand with the instructor as a guide and a help. Grammar 
should, so taught, become a pleasure to teacher and pupil. Especially do I 
relish the author's pages of ' Notes for Teachers,' at the end of the book. The 
man who could write these notes should enlarge them into a monograph on the 
teaching of English Grammar. He would, thereby, add a valuable contribu- 
tion to our stock of available pedagogic helps. I must add in closing, that 
while the book in question has, of course, but small occasion to touch disputed 
points of English Grammar, it never incurs the censure that school grammars 
are almost sure to deserve, of insufficient acquaintance with modern linguistic 
science. In short, the writer has shown himself scientifically, as well as peda- 
gogically, altogether competent for his task." 

—Principal Samuel Thurber. 

high school, fort WAYNE, IND. 

" . . . . It is not often that one has occasion to be enthusiastic over a 
school-book, especially over an English Grammar, but out of pure enthusiasm, 
I write to express my grateful appreciation of this one. It is, without exception, 
the best English Grammar that I have ever seen for children from twelve to 
fifteen years of age. It is excellent in matter and method. Every page shows 
the hand of a wise and skilful teacher. The author has been content to present 
the facts of English Grammar in a way intelligible to children. The book is so 
intelligible and so interesting from start to finish that only the genius of dulness 
can make it dry. There are no definitions inconsistent with the facts of our 
language, no facts at war with the definitions. There are other grammars that 
are more "complete " and as correct in teaching, but not one to be compared 
with it in adaptation to the needs of young students. It will not chloroform the 
intelligence." — Principal C. T. Lane. 

high school, minooka, ill. 

" We introduced your School Grammar into our schools the first of this 
term, and are highly satisfied with the results. In my judgment there is no 
better work extant for the class of pupils for which it is designed. " 

— Principal E. F. Adams, 

newark academy, newark, n. j. 

" We are using with much satisfaction your Longmans' School Grammar, 
adopted for use in our classes over a year since. Its strong points are simplic- 
ity of arrangement, and abundance of examples for practice. In these par- 
ticulars I know of no other book equal to it." — Dr. S. A. Farrand. 

*^ A Prospectus showing contents and specimen pages may be had of the Pub- 
lishers, 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, of CO:S PUBLICATIONS 

STUDIES IN AMERICAN EDUCATION. 

By Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. i2mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.25. 

Contents : Has the Teacher a Profession ? — Reform in the Grammar 
Schools — University Participation, a Substitute for University Extension — 
How to Study History — How to Teach History in Secondary Schools — The 
Status of Athletics in American Colleges — Index. 

" This volume consists of six essays, each one excellent in its way." 

— Public Opinion, New York. 

" Prof. Hart is a keen observer and a profound thinker ; he knows what 
American education is, and he knows what it ought to be . . . his whole 
treatment of the subject is vigorous and original. . . . He has a most helpful 
article on the study of history, and another equally significant on the teaching of 
history in the secondary schools." — Beacon, Boston. 

"The essays on 'How to Study and Teach History' are admirable. As 
education is a unit, the same methods can be applied in all grades. The relation 
of college eurriculums to secondary schools is the underlying subject of the book, 
but it is still an open question whether secondary schools should justify their 
methods because they prepare for college, or whether they should assume the 
independent position, that they furnish such knowledge as is most requisite for 
boys and girls who can study till they are eighteen, but are not going to college. 
It is easily possible to take this attitude and yet have a preparatory class for 
Harvard in the same high school." — Literary World, Boston. 

** As for the essays themselves, however, only words of praise ought to be 
spoken. The style is clear, concise, active, enlivened by apt illustrations ; 
' breezy ' may perhaps be the word. The thought is practical and clear-headed, 
as Professor Hart always is, and the essays themselves have been ' brought down 
to date.' " — School Review, Hamilton, N. Y. 

" This new volume from the experience and pen of Professor Hart is one of 
practical interest, and a valuable addition to the rapidly increasing collection of 
works on pedagogy. . . . While all the chapters are interesting, perhaps the 
one most interesting to the general reader is that on ' How to Study History,' and 
here Mr. Hart shows his decided preferences for the topical method of study. 
This chapter should be read by all students of history and especially by those 
members of private classes, of which so many are to be found in our villages and 
clubs all through the country." — Transcript, Boston. 

" His studies have a decidedly practical tendency, and together constitute an 
addition to our steadily growing stock of good educational literature." 

— Dial, Chicago. 

*' The author is especially fitted to write a volume which has the rare merit of 
treating current educational ideas not only from the standpoint of the teacher, 
but also of the pupil, the board of education and the public at large. The book 
will prove specially interesting and instructive to the general reader." 

Post Graduate, Wooster, Ohio. 

"Whatever Dr. Hart contributes to educational or historical literature is 
always worth reading, and teachers will find these essays very suggestive." 

School Review, Monroe, La. 



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